


light and fire

by disheveledcurls



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, assault references, mostly joanloack but more joan-centric than shippy for the most part
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 20:19:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 32,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7859770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/disheveledcurls/pseuds/disheveledcurls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Weird-ass detective BFFs, bees, crime-solving, villains and nemeses... and a relationship predicated on one Holmes, one Watson (and a pet turtle.) New York remains --fondly-- unimpressed. </p><p>(An assortment of vignettes following Joan and Sherlock throughout the seasons, in no particular order. Mostly canon-compliant.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. and miles to go before i sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yonderdarling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yonderdarling/gifts).



_Love is not consolation_ , you wrote,  _it is light_ ,  
[…] and grace, if it comes, comes in secret,  
to those struck dumb, trembling in the glare.

Betsy Scholl, “Gravity and Grace.”

This  morning […] you  tell me you didn’t sleep well. I say I didn’t either. You had a terrible night. “Me too.” We’re extraordinarily calm and tender with each other, as if sensing the other’s rickety state of mind. As if we knew what the other was feeling. We don’t, of course. We never do. No matter. It’s the tenderness I care about. That’s the gift this morning that moves and holds me. Same as every morning.

Raymond Carver, “The Gift.”

 

Over and over again she calls the number he gave her but to no avail. She doesn’t even know if he got her message about Alfredo. They look for him in all the places they can think of. They comb through the house of horrors that was Oscar Rankin’s life, the circles of hell he walked Sherlock through. They find Oscar himself by the rail tracks, beat to within a inch of his life, a seedy, dirty burner phone on the ground next to him, and inside the tunnel, several feet away, his sister’s stiff corpse, but there’s no sign of Sherlock anywhere.  After that she immediately goes to the hospital to check on Alfredo. By the time she returns to the brownstone the sun’s already setting and she is full-on panicking, dark fear like fingers closing at her throat. She walks in and the brownstone welcomes her with an ominous, dark silence. It doesn’t feel like her home: it feels like a tomb or a haunted house with a terrible secret. And just like that, she knows, with a god-awful, instinctive certainty no logical explanation can disprove. So she races downstairs to the basement –every muscle already tense, every hair standing on end– and there he is, sitting on the floor of her office, motionless, covered in grime, arms wrapped around his legs, looking every bit like she imagined he would when he finally caved, and then some.

Rationally she knows that this first impression can only have lasted a few seconds, but for as long as she lives she will remember this as one of those dream-like moments that lasts an eternity, where every detail is permanently burned into her memory: how cold and dark and silent it was in the basement, how pale he was, how he shivered, how many times she had to call his name before he even actually registered her presence, and then the look in his bloodshot eyes when they finally met her gaze, glassy and unfocused and –

 _Watson?,_ her name a whisper, a question, a prayer from a man who doesn’t believe in gods but knows full well that hell exists, tears on his eyelashes and cheeks, blood on his knuckles, on the tips of his shoes, and then in a frenzy, _Watson Watson you found me I’m so sorry sorry sorry_ , that last word repeated over and over like it’s all the language he knows and –

(This is so much worse, she thinks, selfishly, weirdly dissociated from the moment, so much worse than that night in the OR that cost her her career, so much worse than standing before Gerald Castoro’s body, scalpel in hand, a millisecond after nicking his vena cava, knowing he was going to bleed out on her operating table, worse than sitting in court watching people ask her, over and over, how she could have messed up such a simple, standard procedure, worse than anything Liam ever put her through, worse than watching Andrew die under her helpless hands on the floor of a cafeteria, worse than being a pawn in Mycroft’s political plays or being threatened by the man who had hurt Kitty.  This is just worse. And on top of everything she can’t fail this time, she’s supposed to be the strong one, she’s supposed to hold his hand and walk him through this, if she could just remember how breathing works, block out the sound of his slurred apologies and the erratic hammering of her heartbeat in her ears and just – )

“Sherlock,” she says, or thinks she says, as firmly as she can muster, closing her fingers around his hand, even as he fights her off in his own restrained way, pressing his eyes shut and turning his head away and hugging himself tighter, as if he could teleport himself, by sheer force of will, to another dimension where this nightmare never happened. Even as he resists she takes him by the hand and tugs him to his feet and then slowly, gently leads him upstairs to the bathroom, where she sits him down and wipes the dirt and the blood from his hands, the dirt and the sweat from his gray, clammy face. If it weren’t for fear of overstepping some of the unspoken boundaries of their partnership she would kiss every torn knuckle – _the hands that nearly murdered someone, joan, the hands that picked up the syringe? yes, those very hands_ –, every inch of his dear, sad face. But he is a ticking bomb she does not want to set off. So she sticks to the nursing part – that she knows well. Everything else about this whole ordeal frightens her near to death. But this she can do.

( _Steady hands, Joan_ , she tells herself, as she does this and every task of those fraught first hours and days of the recovery, as she told herself a million times when she was still a surgeon. _You know what you’re doing. Steady hands now, freak out later_.)

***

The next few hours and days are both extremely blurry and hectic and extremely quiet. There are a few instances she remembers distinctly. The first thing she does as soon as he’s sobered up is command him to take a shower and go to sleep. The second thing she does is feed Clyde. The third thing she does is lock herself in her room, crawl under the covers without even undressing and cry herself hoarse as quietly as she can. The fourth thing she does is return all her missed calls –Marcus, Alfredo, Gregson– to let people know the situation is –more or less– under control. She almost calls her mom, but then she thinks about how much that would embarrass Sherlock – _Why, thank you for diminishing me even further in Mary Watson’s eyes!_ – and about the explanations that would be demanded from her – _Are you sure, sweetheart, that this is what you wanna do with your life?_ – and desists. Sitting on the floor outside the bathroom listening to the soft sounds of the shower running, she tries to figure out how long it will take for the heroin to burn itself off his system. Wonders how much he used. At one point she thinks she hears crying from inside, but she can’t be sure and either way there’s only so much she can handle right now.  When she hears the faucets being turned off she swiftly stands and leaves, allowing him the luxury of pretending she was never there, that he can take care of himself.

( _The simple truth is, I don’t need you_.)

Sometimes Joan really isn’t sure whether her life is an adventure, a conundrum, or one big cosmic joke.

***

The fifth thing she does is to take down their current wall of crazy. A while later she goes to get his clothes from where they lay in a dejected pile on the bathroom floor. She makes it all the way down to the laundry room before she realizes she can’t actually wash them, because they may very well become evidence in a trial. So, instead, she bags them as she would evidence from any crime scene, and puts them away in one of the filing cabinets in her office.  She knows, of course, that they will most likely be questioned about this whole horrid affair, that they will have to account for their actions, but for now she needs to remove any trace of the existence of the Rankin case, to put it out of sight and mind. She needs their home to be clean of this nightmare. She needs to restore his Sanctum Sanctorum. Once she’s done, she goes back upstairs and makes sure he is where he’s supposed to be: in his bedroom, trying (and failing, but at least trying) to sleep. She puts her ear to the wall and listens to him trashing around pathetically –a killer headache, she figures– until she can’t take it anymore. She bangs her head on the wall softly, one, two, three times, in a silent prayer to whoever is listening (if indeed there’s anyone) to have a little mercy on the both of them. Then there is quiet; she opens her eyes. She pushes the door open a crack and peers inside: curled up on top of the covers and bathed in the moonlight streaming in through the open window, shirtless and sweaty, his chest rising and falling with shallow, ragged breaths, Sherlock sleeps. She goes inside and for a few seconds stands watching over him, knowing that if he is faking sleep he will not resist the need to moodily shoo her away. But he does not wake. Briefly she entertains the notion of lying down next to him, arm slung over his waist. It would feel so good to sleep, she thinks, closing her eyes and drawing in a slow breath, to lie down next to his warmth and stop thinking for a little while. Also it would ensure that he would stay where he’s supposed to stay, and should he have nightmares, that he would feel safe when he finally came to. She indulges in this humble fantasy for as long as she can hold her breath, and then she exhales, opens her eyes and lets it go. She closes the window – _Watch over him for me for a while_ , she begs of the moon, who like her is a beacon surrounded by darkness, who like her is imperfect yet idealized, who like her is a mirror, who like her is a witness–, drapes a blanket over him, and exits, closing the door quietly behind her.

Then she goes upstairs, for the sixth thing she does is to turn the house upside down, to the best of her abilities, looking for heroin. (She finds none, but it’s a big house and her partner is very good at hiding things, so she’s far from satisfied.) The seventh thing she does, hours later, is call Ms. Hudson to help her tidy up, apologizing profusely both for the early hour and the brownstone’s general state of disarray. The eight thing she does is welcome Marcus, who shows up a couple of hours later –uninvited–, bearing groceries and a face full of concern and sympathy. And Joan has to take a millisecond to very deliberately school her face into showing gratitude, into seeming pleased rather than pissed. As much as she appreciates Marcus’s good intentions, she needs company right now like she needs to be shot in the foot. And yet, and yet: Sherlock has relapsed, something must be done about it, and since he will see no one, she is has apparently been appointed his official, de facto spokeswoman. She must therefore answer questions. She must therefore be welcome visitors. She has, in short, as much of a duty to everyone else as she has to her partner. _Fuck today and all of this tenfold_ , thinks Inside Joan.

“Marcus,” says Outside Joan, airily, as warm as ever. “Come on in.” Robotically, she asks him to have a seat in the parlor and produces a cup of tea she’s sure must be the worst she’s ever made.

“Oscar Rankin is gonna make it,” Marcus says, at some point. She hasn’t been paying a lot of attention, merely nodding in the right places and offering half-baked answers, but this filters through, startling her back into focus. “It’s basically a miracle, considering –“ and here he cuts himself off, tilts his head to the side. Spares her the details. “He’ll live.”

But she’s already asked Gregson, and besides, she used to be a doctor: she knows death as well as she knows life, and she knows every nook and cranny in between. She can picture the bruises, the split lips, the teeth coming loose, the broken bones, the architectural marvel that is a human face caving in. How easily an eye can be damaged beyond repair, how easily the neck can be snapped.

“Right,” she says, and gets up. “Will you excuse me a second?” Without waiting for a reply she rushes upstairs to the bathroom, falls to her knees before the toilet, and retches. When she’s done, she stands, splashes her face with cold water, brushes her teeth. Then, numbly, she looks down at her trembling hands. _Do no harm_.

Sherlock is in the doorway, watching her. She can’t tell whether he looks sad or horrified. Maybe both. _What?_ _I can be sick too_ , she thinks, irrationally. “Marcus brought groceries,” she says, breezing past him on her way out. “He says get better.”

After Marcus leaves, she tries –and fails– to get in touch with Sherlock’s father. Morland Holmes’s minions arrange –and then reschedule– their boss’s emergency visit to New York so many times that she eventually blocks their faceless, corporate numbers. (This is the ninth thing she remembers doing in the hours following the relapse.)

And the tenth thing she does is tell the bees what happened, because they deserve to know, she decides preposterously. They will want to be apprised of their keeper’s wellbeing and whereabouts. They will care, she thinks, as much as she does, and, unlike human beings, they will pass no judgment. So she leans in closer and confides to the hives a tentative summary of the past few hours. _I am a ridiculous person_ , she admonishes herself, partly detached from the moment. _A crazy woman standing on the rooftop in the middle of the working day, talking to bees._ The bees make no comment whatsoever, but at least now they know. When she’s done, she presses one palm flat against the apiary’s protective glass, as if comforting the hives. _He’s gonna be fine_ , she whispers, or thinks, unsure whether she’s reassuring the bees or herself. Then she sits down on the chair beside the hives, with her head in her hands, and weeps, and this is where Ms. Hudson finds her, some time later, with a proper cup of tea that soon goes cold and a hug Joan needed, but would have never asked for. Before them, the _Watsonias_ seem to buzz louder than usual, as if they were as upset as she is. Behind her stands New York City, bright and untouchable and timeless.

***

Later, she lies in bed trying to sleep but every time she closes her eyes she’s back in that basement –

because of course he chose the basement, she reasons, tangentially, absurdly upset about it, of course in his self-punishing yet metaphorically apt disorientation he’d want to settle down at the lowest he could be in his own house, of course he wanted to literally hit rock bottom. If he could, he would have buried himself alive–

Except that in this nightmare –and in the many more that follow in the nights to come– she finds him too late, she finds him dead, as cold and rigid and irreparably gone as every corpse she has ever inspected or cut open. She tosses and turns and when she falls asleep she wakes up gasping with terror, so after a while she just gives up, kicks her blankets aside, jumps off the bed and stomps off. She finds him curled up in the bathtub, too wired to sleep and too tired to be awake, his skin still looking pale and sickly. When she comes into the room he half-sits and wiggles his eyebrows in a feeble acknowledgment.  

Instinctively she reaches out and presses the back of her hand to his forehead to take his temperature. (Later, she will tell herself she imagined the way he drew in a sharp breath and leaned –minimally– into her touch.) “Mmmkay,” she says, removing her hand and sitting down on the floor with her back pressed against the cold wall and her legs folded. “At least you’re not running a fever.”

He nods, barely, but doesn’t seem to care either way.

“Do you mind if I stay here?”

He shakes his head.

She thinks about how Regular Sherlock would have reacted to her coming into the bathroom: springing to his feet as she came in, giving her a full, detailed explanation as to the reasons why he was lying in the bathtub (especially if she didn’t ask and she was in a hurry.) He would have asked whether she needed it; he would have said, cheerfully,   _Watson! Welcome to my humble abode_. But this Sherlock is mute and sad and embarrassed: he merely does her the courtesy of turning on his side so that he’s facing her and then he closes his eyes.  

***

It’s not long before she becomes bored, and the more bored she gets the likelier it is that she will fall asleep – thus going straight back to the nightmares. She considers reading a book but she’s too drained to focus on anything. So she pulls out her cellphone, chooses a playlist Sherlock had once set up for her – _Because a detective must be well versed in the arts_ , _Watson_ , he had pontificated, unperturbed by her skepticism, _and music is without question the most formidable of the arts, and of all musicians the classical masters those we must turn to for reflection and enlightenment_ – and sets it on the windowsill. She presses play: indolent piano strokes begin to fill the air.

His eyes fly open. “Chopin,” he says immediately, under his breath. Not a favorite of his, she recalls, but maybe he will tolerate it, at least for a little while.

“Would this be okay?” she asks.

He shuts his eyes and breathes in, slow, as the graceful melody unfurls delicately. His fingers twitch and flutter. And it’s as if they are both transfixed, suddenly, transported elsewhere – the events of the past few days fall away, gritty, frightening New York falls away, their grief and heartbreak and terror fall away, and there is only this small, dimly lit room, only their quiet breaths and the music. (She doesn’t take his hand but she pictures them both soaring above it all against a dark, star-studded velvet sky, like Chagall’s flying lovers.)

“Sherlock?” she says, tentative. She means, _You still with me?_

“Watson,” he whispers, without opening his eyes. He nods. “Thank you.”

***

The next day, she reaches out to Kitty to tell her what happened. Kitty won’t say where she is –Sherlock’s best guess, months ago, when Joan had asked, was that she’d start out in London and then maybe cross over to the Continent–, but judging from the background noises –people chatting and laughing and placing orders in several different languages including English– she figures at the moment she’s in a café of some kind, maybe even trying to carry out some kind of surveillance.  “Oh God,” Kitty says, once she’s heard the full story, and then she’s sobbing into the phone, “oh God, is he okay? Are _you_ okay? Do you need help? Shall I go back?” Joan reassures her that she doesn’t have to do anything, that they both want her to stay safe wherever she is, and that she will have Sherlock call her himself with an update once he feels better. She hears the younger woman take a deep breath on the other end of the line, like she’s trying to calm herself down. Joan pictures her wiping at her tears clumsily, her heavy makeup now ruined, making her look even more like a raccoon, and almost smiles. “Okay,” Kitty says, after a beat. She sighs. “Okay. But I’ll be waiting for that update. Tell him–” Kitty stops, and Joan imagines her chin trembling, a few more tears rolling down her cheeks, staining them black. “Tell him to remember the conversation we had when I left. And Watson, thank you for taking care of him.”

Joan feels the pressure of tears behind her eyes, and for a moment she is speechless. She should’ve figured Kitty would say that. Joan’s done the math. She knows –she figured it out _post factum_ , but she knows– that Kitty saved him when she barely even knew him, when even she, Joan, couldn’t, when she was too angry, too far away to keep him safe. For that she owes Kitty more than she can ever pay back, but that is a conversation for another time. “You don’t have to thank me,” she says, finally. “Stay safe. We’ll be in touch.”

***

Later that day a postcard arrives, unmarked, unstamped, with no return address.

 

 

> _My dear Watson:_
> 
> _We both knew this would happen. It’s not your fault. He is weak –like most men–, and you are not enough to keep him afloat – only I can be. For now, take care of him as best you can. One day –sooner than you think– we’ll meet again, and then he will no longer be your responsibility._
> 
> _Yours,_
> 
> _Jamie Moriarty._

Joan burns the postcard before the words even fully register, before Sherlock can see it. As she watches it burn, she clenches her fists tight all her knuckles go white. She stays by his side even more stubbornly than before, vibrating all day with a rage she can’t shake. She doesn’t sleep that night either.

***

By the fourth day he seems a little better, resurrected to at least some degree of normalcy. He eats some real breakfast, looks at her across the kitchen table and speaks his first full sentence in days.

“Watson,” he says timidly, and she starts. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be spoken to, almost forgotten she had a name. “You should get some sleep.”

She studies his face through a haze of sleep-deprived exhaustion. Part of her is still in a state of emergency, ever the faithful sober companion reluctant to leave his side. _Bad idea._

“Please,” he says, like he’s read her mind. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Rationally she knows, of course, that he’s right, that she’s no good to him like this anyway, when she can barely stay on her feet. “Okay,” she says, “but only for a little while. Wake me up if you need anything at all.” She retreats to her room and flops drunkenly onto her bed. _Power nap_ , she tells herself. _Won’t even notice I’m gone._ She dreams she’s running through a dark tunnel, chased by a swarm of poisonous killer bees. When she feels herself running out of steam, about to give up, the tunnel opens up abruptly into a walled garden, and the killer bees –suddenly turned into fireflies– begin to dance around her. When she opens up her eyes it’s already dark outside. The clock on her nightstand says she has slept almost ten hours, and she jumps out of bed as if electrocuted, tears through the house in a blind panic until she realizes he’s safe right where she left him: in the kitchen, having dinner with Alfredo. Of course, she remembers, she’d told him to drop by as soon as he felt better. She stands at the top of the stairs listening to the soft sounds of their talk and the prosaic clatter of the cutlery until the wild pace of her heartbeat slows down. She takes a deep breath – _steady, Joan, steady_ –, wraps her red cardigan more tightly around herself, and descends.

***

“I can’t begin to thank you for everything you’ve done,” he says, that night, on the rooftop, after she informs him that his father is supposed to arrive the next day.

Her whole body tenses with the memory of the past few days, of the weeks leading up to the relapse, to this moment, because if he even has to bring it up –and of course, she knew he would– then he doesn’t get it, and if she tries to explain she will cry, she will fall apart, she will be weak, and in a word she will fail him. “You don’t have to thank me,” she says, not only because she means it, but also because she would like him not to press the matter further. She’s so tired. She would like two weeks’ bed rest before they even attempt to have this conversation.

“Of course I have to thank you,” he counters, because he’s Sherlock, and he can’t wait two weeks, he can’t wait another second. His face a grim mask. “I cringe to think of how terribly I must have disappointed you.”

She immediately shakes her head. Disappointment, she thinks, would imply surprise. But he doesn’t need to know she always kind of knew, deep in her gut, that this was coming. Because that’s kind of the worst part, she realizes, digressing, the fact that she watched him struggle for over a year –with or without her, with or without Kitty– and knew he was gonna lose the fight. How weak he was and how little she could do for him and how powerless she felt because in the end it would be his call either way. No matter how close or far she drew, that choice –heroin or everything else– was always going to be his and his alone. And when she found him, how horrifying, how dreadful it was to be proven right, how weary she felt knowing they had to start all over again. But she can’t tell him this. “Mostly you just scared me. A lot,” she blurts out, instead, and the unexpected truth of it roots her to the spot: that wild, visceral terror is still lodged like a bullet in her sternum, keeps her up at night like a wounded animal that won’t stop howling.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He’s quiet after that, willing her to say more, to get angry. She has a right to, after all, after everything the world –more specifically, although not exclusively, men like him– keeps throwing her way. He wishes he had thought of her, days ago, when he dropped the phone, battered Oscar and picked up the heroin, wishes he could have seen, preemptively, what she must have seen when she found him, what he keeps forgetting she carries around everywhere she goes:  Castoro dying on her operating table, Liam Danow choosing heroin over her, again and again, Mycroft lying to her, the smell of blood and vodka and gunpowder filling her nostrils as a French mobster shoots another right in front of her, Andrew, poisoned to death, lying stiff on the floor of a cafeteria. If he had somehow put himself in her shoes for just a second, he thinks, if he had felt what she would feel later, relieving all that when she found him –terror and anger and disappointment and frustration and dread–, he’s fairly certain he would have never used. It would have made him far too ashamed. Nonetheless, he did use, and here they are: he no less an addict than when they first met, and she no less a caregiver, refusing to collapse under the weight of it all, refusing to implode, carrying it around inside of her, never saying anything, never complaining, always ready to help. Setting herself aside for later, only _later_ never comes because there’s always something else, isn’t there, some new emergency, some new trouble he will get himself in, and her by association. _Your apologies always seem to come after you got what you wanted,_ she’d said, once. He has never been more disgusted with himself, ever. His hands curl into fists. _Be angry. Yell at me. Better yet, leave_.

“Apology accepted,” she says, gently, bowing her head. She will not tell him it’s okay –though she so wishes she could– because she will not lie to him. “I wish I could have done more to help,” she confesses. “Just… turn back time and go with you. I should’ve brought you home. I shouldn’t have left you alone with him.”

“You’re not to blame for any of what happened,” he says immediately, stern, but practically vibrating with frustration.  “Everything I did, I chose to do.”

“I know. But still. I wish–“ She trails off, looks at her chipped nail polish. She’s not sure what she wishes. _A professional angel_ , Moriarty had called her once. She doesn’t want to be that person anymore. She doesn’t want to be a crutch. She’s so tired.

The ego of a surgeon, after all this time, he thinks, meanwhile, recalling what he’d said to her the day they met. Impossible to practice medicine without endorsing –even unwittingly– the notion that you’re, by definition, better off than the people you treat. Impossible to be a sober companion without considering yourself whole and strong as opposed to your broken, defeated clients, trapped in the clutches of addiction. Impossible, after years of such training and employment, not to see people as walking assortments of conditions whose cure you hold, or should hold. Four years in, almost, and she’s still trying to fix him, somehow. It makes no sense. And he is so grateful that she is still trying but she should know better, should’ve known that when he said he’d change he was making a promise he would in all likelihood never fulfill. He wonders, idly, if he will ever figure out why she won’t abandon him. Perhaps despite all her growth she remains as dutiful as ever. Perhaps she is more lost than she’d like to admit, and mistakes fear of the unknown for commitment. Whatever the case, it matters not. He can’t be fixed, and she is surely wasting her life away. The thing is, he won’t ask her to leave. First, because it’s not his decision to make, and to believe he has any right to influence that choice would be to belittle her, to imply she is his to command. And Joan Watson is stubborn and brave and forgiving and compassionate and resilient: she will not be cajoled or blackmailed or threatened or bullied. She will make her own choices. She will go where he goes. Secondly, because he’s not going to pretend he doesn’t need her. The last time he tried –every time he tried– the herculean effort of that pretense nearly destroyed him, and, more importantly, he ended up hurting her. He presses the heel of his hands against his eyes. He’s tired, and still hasn’t slept nearly enough, and he has examined these facts, fruitlessly, more times than he’d care to admit. Best to elaborate on what he knows; best to lay down the relevant praise at her feet.

“Your dedication to me these past few days has proven that you are even stronger and more loyal than I expected. That you are,“ he sighs, “a much better partner and friend than I will ever possibly deserve.” This must be said, because thanking her and apologizing is really all he can do, at this point. “As always in our partnership, for every second that I have struggled, you have struggled right alongside me.”

She turns around so she’s facing him, bunches up the thick fabric of her red cardigan under her fingers, tries to keep still, nods. “That’s kind of the point of partnership and friendship,” she points out, in a small voice. “And I happen to think that you deserve it.” Behind her, the _Watsonias_ buzz their agreement.

He jerks his head to the side, once, peeved. “I would have understood, should you have chosen to leave me in somebody else’s care. A nurse, for example, or an actual sober companion.” She opens her mouth to protest, but he raises a hand so she’ll let him finish. “Perhaps I should have made this clear a long time ago. I want you to know that this is not your job, that you mustn’t allow me to be a burden to you–”

“And _I_ want you to understand once and for all that you’re not a burden to me,” she interrupts, raising her voice. “Look, I’m not gonna pretend that everything’s okay. I don’t even know if we’re gonna keep our jobs. But a), you’ve recovered before and you’ll do it again, and b) you’re my partner and my friend, and I’m not going anywhere.” She pauses, huffs out a short exasperated breath. There is only so much she can say without plunging despairingly into the black hole that is her proverbial Feelings About Sherlock filing cabinet (subsection: Where Are We Going With This?) She loves him –but even if she knew it-knew it she wouldn’t know what to do with it– and she’s terrified and angry and exhausted. She stands right in front of him, arms crossed over her chest, willing him not to look away. “I take care of you because I want to.” 

“But it’s not _fair,_ ” he says, quietly but with great, stubborn emphasis, finally looking up to meet her gaze. “This is such utter bullshit that I keep putting you through,” he snaps, after a second, breaking eye contact. He begins to pound his fist repeatedly against his thigh with more energy that she has seen him display in days. “I’m so fucking sorry, Watson, I can’t even tell you how much.”

Because, somehow, part of him understands. She has already forgiven him and she will never give up on him and it makes him so desperately _angry_ that whatever circle of hell he finds himself in he will always drag her down with him. _You and I are bound. Somehow._

She realizes, with faint shock, that this is the most she has ever heard him swear, even at his angriest. “Stop that, please,” she says, looking pointedly at his hand, and he immediately complies, letting out a loud, shaky breath and muttering an apology. He flexes out his fingers a couple of times, then shoves both of his hands into the pockets of his old hoodie.

She sighs, half turning away to look out at the ever-present lights of the city they both love. “I promise you,” she says, turning back to him, “that we’re gonna get through this just like we got through everything else. We’re gonna find a way.” Then she looks down at him, hoping he will understand she means it, and brushes her fingertips to the stubbly side of his face, a small sad smile playing with the corners of her lips. He keeps very still and looks very skeptical but he holds her gaze. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he whispers, and she removes her fingers.

“Then go to bed already,” she says, softly, non-sequitur, and starts to head off. Then she turns on her heel and nods in the general direction of the hives. “You should check on them when you feel better, by the way,” she reminds him. “The _Watsonias_ miss you.” 

***

The next morning Sherlock shaves (finally), feeds Clyde, rearranges the locks on the wall (alphabetically by country of origin, this time), and asks her to go with him to a support meeting.

***

A few days later, they get a parcel in the mail with no return address, only a stamp indicating it was shipped from North London. At first she’s suspicious. She takes the lightweight cardboard envelope to the kitchen, puts gloves on and makes a clean straight incision all along the side with a letter opener. Then she pulls the contents out: what appears to be a royal blue tee with a strange picture printed on it and a smaller, white envelope. She opens it, reads the card, looks at the tee, and smiles.

“Sherlock!” she calls out, as she heads his way. She finds him having breakfast in the living room, sitting on the floor near the sofa with a cup of tea, feeding most of his toast to Clyde and attempting to read from one of his thick tomes on the forensic sciences.

“Really?” she asks, coming to a halt beside him and eyeing the book. “Just one? And you’ve already read this one.”

He looks up at her and shrugs. “Literally every single person who’s concerned about my wellbeing, including you, has been telling me to quote take it easy unquote,” he says by way of explanation, punctuating the last part with air quotes.

“Wow. Nice to see you listening to that particular piece of advice, for once. By the way, this just came for you,” she announces, dropping the contents of the parcel into his lap. Clyde, surely offended at the notion that more objects from the sky might start raining down around him any second, begins to crawl away at a slow, dignified gait. For a long second, Sherlock’s eyes trail after him, unfocused.

“Sherlock,” she says, and his eyes snap back to her, his face apologetic.

“It seems you’ve evicted Clyde from the premises.”

“You’re gonna wanna read this,” she says, insistent. She sits on the sofa with her hands clasped before her and waits. He looks at her quizzically –that is, with as much confused interest as he can muster at this particular time of his life, anyway– and then he takes the card from inside the white envelope. The cover illustration is a cartoon turtle wrapped in bandages. Inside, on a pastel lilac background, the card reads:

 

 

> _It’s not the speed that matters, it’s the getting there._
> 
> _Hope you feel better soon._

And below that, a few lines scrawled in a curly, knotty handwriting:

 

 

> _Good old Dad:_
> 
> _Mum called me to say you had a bad fall a few days ago. I’m sorry I can’t be with you now but I’m positive you’re in good hands. I hope you like my present because the minute I saw it I thought of you._
> 
> _I miss you both. Listen to Mum, take care of yourself and call me when you’re better, will you?_
> 
> _XOXO,_
> 
> _your loving daughter,_
> 
> _K._
> 
> _PS: If you don’t understand the writing on the tee, just ask Google, old man._

She watches him read, trying to decipher every emotion that flits across his face, that lodges in the tension of his shoulders. She thinks about touching her hand to the back of his head so he will look at her, so he will know that it’s okay to feel whatever he’s feeling right now. But such a move is risky: she doesn’t know whether it will work or backfire, and she is terrified of hurting him any more than the world already has. She stays just as still as he is, and clasps her hands even tighter.

When he gets to the end of the card he sets his jaw and tucks his chin down toward his chest. For a long beat he looks away, steadying himself, and wipes the back of his hand across his eyes hastily. Then he picks up the t-shirt, unfolds it and stares at the words printed in a narrow white font against the photo of a rolling, rich green field.  He tilts his head, scratches at his stubbly jaw. “ _I’ll punch a bee, I don’t give a fuck_ ,” he reads out. He turns to her, frowning. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

She purses her mouth, stifling a smirk. “It’s a meme,” she says. “I think it’s from a gaming podcast but other than that, I have no idea.”

His frown deepens. “I don’t understand how this pertains to me or my current situation. I would never hurt a bee. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to make sense,” she points out. “Maybe it’s just supposed to be funny.”

He muses on that for a while, holding the tee out in front of him and inspecting the design. “I will do the necessary research,” he says, cautiously, “but I might eventually have to ask her. As you know, some cultural phenomena are inextricably tied to the particular circumstances and experiences of a particular generation, and thus–”

It’s the first time in about a week he sounds like himself. Joan holds her head in her hands to hide the grin that spreads across her face. “What?” He turns to her, mouth pinched in confusion, arching an eyebrow and trying, unsuccessfully, to peer through the curtain of hair that obscures her face.

She shakes her head, pats her thighs and stands. “Good luck with that,” she says. “I’m going to take a shower. And you should call your daughter,” she adds, standing in the doorway, tilting her head a little and raising her eyebrows conspiratorially at that last word.

He looks up at her, still frowning. Incredibly, one corner of his mouth curls upwards in a faint, knowing smirk. It only lasts a second but it happens, and Joan wants to give Kitty an award for what she’s done, an official commendation. “ _Our_ daughter,” Sherlock protests softly, and Joan rolls her eyes and leaves the room before he takes any of it back.

***

When she wakes up the next morning after a fitful sleep full of nightmares –syringes and dark tunnels and zombies with scissor hands, all set to a frantic, off-key, _Psycho_ -esque rendition of Bach’s cello suites–, there is a steaming cup of tea on a tray on the chair beside her bed, and downstairs she can hear Sherlock half humming, half whistling – _Swan Lake_ , if she’s not mistaken– while he makes breakfast. It feels so normal that for a second she’s actually disoriented: the notion of a day where she gets to sleep in and wake up to anything other than a rampant crisis sounds too good to be true. She blinks and pinches herself but she’s definitely awake. So she throws the covers back, takes the teacup and goes downstairs. “Hey,” she calls out, tentatively, as she pads into the kitchen.

When he sees her come in –much as it shames him to admit that this is the first time he really looks at her in over a week–, the first thing he thinks is, _It’s a wonderful day to be alive and clean, Joan_. _Thank you thank you thank you_ –

“Good morning, Watson,” he says, instead, and means it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Notes:  
> 6\. Chapter title from Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”  
> 7\. About this chapter’s timeline. In the show, we get three days between the s3 finale and the s4 premiere. Here I have expanded that timeline to encompass a little over a week. The events in this chapter can therefore be said to have taken place immediately after “A Controlled Descent” and prior to those of “The Past Is Parent.” I have tried to minimize the alterations to the show’s timeline in order not to confuse readers too much. Similarly, I have tried not to deviate too much from canon events, attempting instead to “fill in the blanks” or tweak little variables that I think should’ve been addressed otherwise (e.g. the fact that in the show apparently it is Gregson and Marcus who find Sherlock by the railtracks.)  
> 8\. The classical music pieces referenced throughout the chapter are as follows. Two personal favorites of mine: Chopin’s Nocturne No. 2 in E Flat Major, op. 9, and “Scene (Moderato)”, Act. II, 14, op. 20, from Tchaikovksy’s Swan Lake, and Bach’s Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007: Prélude (which was actually played in the show in 3.09 “The Eternity Injection.”)  
> 9\. Headcanon that the brownstone has a tiny laundry room in the basement because they no longer trust dry-cleaning establishments after 1.17.  
> 10\. The Chagall painting referenced in the chapter –one of his most famous works– is called “Over the Town.”  
> 11\. The inspiration behind the “talking to bees” thing: Sarah Lindsay’s coda about her poem “Tell The Bees”, which stems from her discovery of “the tradition of informing domestic bees of events, such as births and deaths, in the keeper’s household” (Best American Poetry 2009.) Headcanon that Joan and Sherlock secretly talk to the bees all the time.  
> 12\. The influence for all the eavesdropping Joan does in this chapter: Beyoncé’s “Pray You Catch Me” (naturally) and Margaret Atwood’s “You Heard the Man You Love.”  
> 13\. Finally, this chapter wouldn’t be what it is if it weren’t for yonderdarling’s “the alternative casebook” (which I can’t recommend enough) and for the lovely and lively meta discussion I’ve been having with fellow fans on Tumblr such as @aprincesswholovesinsects, @amindamazed, @possibility221, and @nairobiwonders, among other contributors.


	2. the good fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joan Watson seems to be Brooklyn’s very own patron saint of lost causes and Sherlock has a few things to say about it. 
> 
> [Another post-relapse early s4 AU, though fairly compliant with canon, plot-wise.]

_love, love is a verb,_

_love is a doing word_

_fearless on my breath._

massive attack, "teardrop."

 

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn’t be inside of someone else. […]

Your body told me in a dream it’s never been afraid of anything.

Richard Siken, “Detail of the Woods.”

 

Do all lovers feel helpless and valiant in the presence of the beloved? Helpless because the need to roll over like a pet dog is never far away. Valiant because you know you would slay a dragon with a pocket knife if you had to.  […] I think the holy stable must have looked this way; glorious and humble and unlikely.

Jeanette Winterson, _The Passion._

 

 

The darkness in the tunnel is more than just a lack of light: it's like thick cloth wrapped around her head and Joan can't breathe.

She wakes up, but her heart won't stop racing. Shortly after, as if on cue, Sherlock pops in with a breakfast tray, leaves it silently by her bedside and exits. She pretends to be asleep, though she knows he heard her stir with a sad little whimper.

It's been a little over a week since Sherlock relapsed, and now that he's safe and sound, the weight of what happened seems to be finally catching up with her. He has been staying out of her way these days, trying to keep busy despite her request that he get some much-needed rest, and going to meetings constantly, but sometimes she'll catch him watching her with a look of such apologetic gratitude  she has to pretend it isn't happening, because it is too much to bear. The worst of it isn’t the relapse itself: the worst of it is wondering if he could survive another without her. Joan isn’t vain, never has been, but she knows codependence when she sees it, and her gut keeps telling her not to ignore it. Not that Sherlock’s the only one: the gravity she spoke of two years ago is still there, binding them like planets, and sometimes it’s hard to remember how she could’ve possibly lived otherwise – as a single, complete person, rather than only half of a whole. Maybe there’s nothing wrong with that, or maybe it’s a kind of weakness, but either way she pushes the thoughts aside. One problem at a time, she reminds herself, one day at a time. Yet the nagging fear remains:  if something happened to her (again), could she trust him to take care of himself on his own or to open up enough to let the rest of their tight-knit circle of friends help him? It’s not that she feels trapped, it’s that her sober companion training is telling her very loudly that replacing one addiction with another never works. They’ll have to talk about it, she supposes: a new drawing of boundaries, a new discussion of what their partnership involves, striking while the iron’s hot, and all that. Though the need to protect him remains strong, she doesn’t particularly care for playing sober companion again or acting like she is a qualified dispenser of platitudes and self-help advice, but it has to be done, and Sherlock lets no one else get this close. 

To think of his pain —the cumulative weight of it, not just the question of the last few days— has become intolerable. It feels lived-in, resigned and familiar in a way she isn’t ready to address, and it doesn’t help that her words are failing her, that she’s finding it hard to articulate what she feels in any way that isn’t too self-centered or banal or patronizing to share with him. (And the possibility of that much-needed heart-to-heart, of failing even at that, is much too daunting: won’t planets literally collide if they get too close?)  But it’s okay, she tells herself, ever the pragmatist: there are other options, other ways of addressing what happened without falling apart completely in front of her best friend when he needs her most. Her anger welcomes her back with open arms, and there’s still a loose end she wants to look into.

She leaves Sherlock at the brownstone one night with the excuse of going out for a walk to clear her head, but instead she goes to the hospital where Oscar Rankin is being kept under police custody until he's stable enough to be transferred to some precinct or other to await trial.  Somehow she breezes past security and into his room with ease; she is getting better at lying, which should perhaps be a source of concern. But she has hardly any room in her body for any more worry right now, so she discards the thought and slowly inches her way closer to the hospital bed where Oscar lies dejected, circling in front of it almost predatorily while she reviews his chart. Sherlock's beating had been intense, but typically impulsive: she could have been more methodical, she thinks, more effective. After all, medical knowledge meant for healing can easily be used to hurt: she would have known which bones to break and which areas to pummel to cause the most pain and inconvenience. She is vaguely aware of the viciousness of these thoughts, but she lets them float through her mind unexamined. Normally she would feel sorry for someone like Oscar, but the last week has been horrific and she is saving whatever compassion she has left for Sherlock, Alfredo –locked in an airless vault for nearly a full day courtesy of Oscar— and herself.

Oscar opens his bleary eyes but it takes him a while to focus enough to talk. He must be heavily sedated, and he does have a concussion, she'll give him that. Not that he was ever a great conversationalist to begin with.  "Aw, Sherlock's little bitch," Oscar rasps, predictably rude.

  Joan's smile is glacial. "That's cute. How are you feeling?"

 "Like your boyfriend nearly killed me. Guy’s fucked in the head if you ask me.”

“I didn’t ask, actually."

“So what are you doing here?” Oscar demands, with the impatience of a businessman too busy to concern himself with trifles. “Came to finish what he started?”

“Oh, he didn’t start anything,” Joan corrects him. “You did.”

Oscar laughs, a dirty, sickly laugh that devolves into a cough. “He beats me up and it’s my fault?”

She tilts her head, and her expression shifts as if she were scolding a misguided child. “Oscar, you tortured Sherlock and you kidnapped one of our best friends just to mess with him. I’d say you hardly have a right to play the victim.”

Oscar has the nerve to roll his eyes. “Whatever. I’m not gonna admit to anything if that’s what you’re here for. I know my rights and all.”

Joan is surprised to find herself actually chuckling at Oscar’s delusion of self-possession. “Oh, I’m sure you do,” she agrees with a patronizing sneer.

Oscar brushes a nervous hand against his nose, shifts as if he wanted to cross his arms over his chest, which he can't do because one of his arms is in a cast. "Look, dollface, I don’t know what you want me to say. I didn’t make him shoot up.”

She lets out a bitter, choked sound that could barely pass for a _ha_. She doesn’t feel like laughing anymore. “You helped a lot, though. You have no idea what you destroyed, do you?" She raises an eyebrow, takes a step closer to the bed, fighting the urge to ball her fists. "No fucking _clue_ what he’s been through for the last three years, or how much being clean matters to him." And before she can stop herself, she adds: "Clearly, you haven’t tried it very seriously yourself.” The sober companion in her winces at her own cruelty.

Oscar is –or pretends to be— unimpressed by her contempt. “Not all of us can afford fancy rehab.”

“Sherlock offered to pay for your rehab months ago,” she reminds him, livid. “You threw it in his face.”

“I don’t need his fucking charity,” Oscar growls. “And I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to be here, so you better say what you wanna say real quick before I start yelling for the cops.”

“Sure, I’ll be quick,” she obliges, her eyes narrowing, her tone soft, mock-grateful. “In fact, I’m gonna make this really simple for you. It's like this: my partner,” she starts, punctuating the words by pointing to her own chest, “tried being nice to you and look where it got him. But I’m not as nice as he is." Here she flashes a dangerous little smile. "So here goes: if you as much as go near him again, I’ll have you thrown in lock-up for whatever bullshit charges I can think of." Then she pauses, studying Oscar's face for signs of comprehension. And in the same neutral tone she resumes: "And if you try to hurt either of us or Alfredo again, I will put you in jail myself and personally make sure you do not survive it." Joan doesn't relish the possibility of asking Moriarty, of all people, for a favor, but if that's what it takes, she'll do it. (As always, her hands are steady even if her world is in constant turmoil.)

Oscar eyes her wearily, like he doesn't care either way what happens to him.  "Thanks for the heads-up. That all you got?"

Joan tilts her head again. "That's all." She slings her bag higher over her shoulder, slowly taps her fingers on Oscar's chart a couple of times, then sets it down in its container at the foot of the bed. "See you never, Oscar."

Then she leaves before he can reply, before she can be tempted to do something crazy, like altering the indications on his chart so he will have horrible migraines for the next few days or an awful rash in allergic reaction to a medication he wasn't supposed to be on. It scares her how easily she can see herself pulling that off, and then justifying it to herself just as easily: _Mistakes happen in hospitals sometimes, don't they? A distraction or forgotten detail here or there... This is New York City, after all: nurses and interns are always overworked. It’s not like he deserves to get better all that quick_. She knows she hates Oscar enough not to lose any sleep over it. But she’s not Moriarty – she’s not going to hurt someone just because she can. Besides, to harm Oscar would be to condone what Sherlock did to him in the first place, and that wouldn't be good for his recovery. She understands why he did what he did. She just cannot allow herself to react in the same way. One of them, at least, must retain some semblance of sanity. One of them has to keep things from falling apart completely. So if he can't be strong right now, she will be for the both of them.

Days like these, Joan feels like they're poised right on the edge of becoming terrible, terrible people, and that it's only her that's fighting not to fall down that slippery slope, only her hands trying to rein them back to neutral territory. And hurting Oscar would make her weak, she thinks, would be an invitation to let everything go, to embrace the violence they come up against every single day, doing the work they do. God knows Joan has anger enough inside herself to fuel a small city, and has read enough comic books to know the rules of the game, but they must not do this. So she will stay alert, and she will wait. If Oscar comes back around, she will defend herself and her loved ones accordingly, and she will finish this. Until then, she will continue to honor her Hippocratic oath. After all, she never stopped believing in it.

———

Sherlock has been clean for a week. He goes to the roof to tend to the bees, contemplates the blinking lights of Brooklyn, and tries not think about Watson in her room below, struggling to wrest a good night's sleep from her nightmares.  Predictably, she has been taking care of him throughout, her sober companion training kicking into overdrive. He estimates it might take her a few more weeks to relearn to sleep through the night.

He wonders whether Watson has told the bees what happened to him —or, more accurately, what he did to himself— and, if so, how she might have articulated it. He would tell them himself, except he doesn't quite know how to put it in any way that doesn't embarrass him. Perhaps the problem is how unstable everything still feels. Yes, he is clean, but he is rattled. How could he have been so careless? How could he have thrown away three years of sobriety, lost down the drain in a moment of recklessness, of ineffective protest or denial of a world that preyed on people like Oscar and made them desperate to the point of hurting and using others for their own petty vengeances? He has been manipulated, he knows; Watson is only one of many claiming that what Oscar put him through amounts to psychological torture. No one, in other words, would have expected him to come out of this unscathed. Still, he spent three years endeavoring to become a better person, one prepared to survive such challenges, one who could brave such temptations and come out victorious. But he has realized with no small amount of disappointment that he is evidently just as weak as he always was: perhaps the only thing he’s gotten better at is hiding it.

The matter evidently demands some honest self-examination –and this indeed is what some fellow attendees of his support meetings have been recommending— but when he tries to push past the shame and self-loathing surrounding the incident by the tracks he can arrive at no single trigger other than a brief flash of fury unleashing the resigned surrender he had been battling for over a year. A futile effort, as it turned out, as if he'd been trying to repair a cracked dam with tape and glue. The heroin almost seems to have been nothing but a post-script, an afterthought. He didn't, after all, follow Oscar into his grim little wild goose chase aiming to get high, but because he was intent on rescuing Alfredo before it was too late. Yet after the hell Oscar made him inhabit for a day, it seems as if he had lost all track of that original aim, as if he had in fact become the person Oscar thought he was, an addict who would always be defeated –no matter how drawn-out the fight—, and for whom using or not, in the end, made no difference.

He tries, out of respect for his peers, not to be too explicit or grim about the incident in meetings, but the reality is that it is taking him all he has, every day, to stay on track. It never seems to get any easier. The enormity of his own fallibility terrifies him, the long climb back to long-term sobriety stretches vast and tedious ahead of him, and the certainty that he has let down everybody he cares about –Watson especially— disgusts him. He still doesn’t dare ask what these days have been like for her, though he's fairly certain she's having a rough time as well, and this makes it both harder to accept what he's done, and more imperative never to repeat the experience. The punchline to this horrid cosmic joke? When he finally works up the courage to go apologize to Gregson in person, the captain informs him that he and Watson both are facing, at the very least, a temporary suspension from the NYPD due to what he did. Hurting his own career prospects, that is one thing, but ruining hers? Unacceptable. _You should've thought of that before you did heroin, buddy_ , says an evil voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Oscar's, and he spends that day in a bleak mood, hating himself a little more than usual.

Meanwhile, Alfredo calls him before going to stay with his sister in Chicago just to reassure him that they are still friends, and that they can talk more when he comes back. (His exact words: "You and me, Sherlock. He doesn't get to destroy that, you know?") Meanwhile, Ms. Hudson still stays for dinner on Tuesdays, and has lately taken to discussing the _Odyssey_ with him, reciting her favorite parts in Ancient Greek in her soft, low voice while Watson listens, drowsy but fascinated, from her spot on the sofa. Meanwhile, every day Watson tries her absolute best to protect him —from his father, from the consequences of his actions, from himself— and there's a part of him that feels luckier about all this than he can possibly verbalize and there's another part of him that feels like utter scum. But none of them would like him thinking so poorly of himself, nor does Watson, in particular, appreciate being idolized – she has made a point of this over their three years together. So he tries to repurpose the energy otherwise wasted in anger and self-hatred into a learning experience of some kind. Learning, after all, is one of his fortes. Perhaps he could write little mental lists every day, and go through every item conscientiously:

_To Do:_

  * _go grocery shopping_
  * _clean fridge_
  * _fix heating in W's room_
  * _don't be a fucking selfish prick (including but not limited to using heroin)_



There could be something to be gained from that. He isn't very optimistic about long-term success these days, but he's committed to making an effort. He owes that to himself and everybody that cares about him. He owes them the trying.  

———

He has a dream that he wanders around a deserted New York until he comes to a melancholy theater whose deteriorated marquee reads _WELCOME ALL TO THE AMAZING HOLMES-WATSON DOUBLE ACT,_ and decides to go in. There’s no one in the box office, nor in the main lobby or hallways, but when he tries one of the doors into the auditorium he knows he’s in the right place. There is a single spotlight shining on the center of the stage, where something that looks an awful lot like an old-fashioned dentist’s chair is set up, and he knows instinctively that chair is waiting for him. When he walks past the vacant seats, he hears whispers like wind rustling leaves, and then the thrumming and piping of instruments being tuned as he climbs a few steps up to the stage past the orchestra pit. As soon as he steps into the circle of light, Watson comes out from behind the curtains, met by great fanfare that seems to be playing itself. The whispers increase, though when he looks over his shoulder the room’s still empty except for the two of them. Watson is wearing scrubs, and she looks tense but confident, like an experienced performer who still gets a buzz from every show, no matter how small the venue. He wants to ask her what is going on, but Watson tells him to take a seat, and he unthinkingly obeys. Surely she is in control of the situation, since she wouldn’t look so calm otherwise. Surely if they were in danger she would have warned him, or, more probably, tried to protect him. As he shifts nervously in the seat –the light is much too bright, and the chair a tad too short for his legs—, Watson ceremoniously snaps on a pair of latex gloves, advances, and unbuttons his shirt with clinical detachment. This should probably be a sign that this is a dream —in real life she’d never take such liberties without asking for his consent— but he pays it no mind, nor does he question his lack of undershirt. As he looks on, spellbound, Watson produces a scalpel and holds it up for the empty auditorium to see. Under the spotlight the blade glints like silver, and the room echoes with sounds of admiration and frightened murmurs.

Then Watson looks down at him: “I’m sorry,” she warns, with a professional kind of compassion, “this is gonna hurt.” All of a sudden his mouth is dry and his palms sweaty: all he can do is nod. She positions the scalpel on his chest and makes a clean, triangular incision, as if performing an autopsy. Blood begins to pour from the cuts and trickle down the sides of his body and the edges of the chair, until he can hear it drip onto the stage floor. Yet there's no pain so far. Watson expertly folds back his flesh out of the way as if it were modelling clay and starts to rummage around inside. Then he feels her grab a hold of something within his ribcage, and she hums a small worried sound and huffs out a breath. "Alright," she mumbles. "Here we go." Watson starts pulling on whatever it is she's grabbed, and he flinches when the pain begins. It is a sustained pain comparable to a badly broken nail, or plucking out a strand of hair, or ripping off a scab a couple of days too soon.  All in all, he’s had worse. Watson pulls and pulls, gasping with the effort of it, and after a while a thick, purple-black strand of something both viscous and intangible comes into view, writhing like a living thing as it wraps around her wrist and arm and begins to coil on the floor at her feet.

More exclamations of wonder come from their invisible audience, whose tension is palpable. Watson pulls so much rope out of him that Sherlock starts to wonder whether he’ll feel empty once she’s done, or whether –and this makes him far more apprehensive— there’s something alive pulling on the other end in the opposite direction, some monstrous thing refusing to come out. But then there is a snapping sound and a ghastly sensation of something coming unstuck from the underside of his ribcage, and it appears Watson has been successful in uprooting the rope entirely. She comes to the end of her efforts, wipes the sweat off her brow, and holds the entire snake-like length of rope up to the light for the audience to see. There's a loud round of applause and she takes a modest bow. He's about to ask her to stitch him up –it would be a danger to walk around gaping open like that, even in this dream world where he apparently can be operated on quite unconventionally without hemorrhaging to death— but when he looks down at his chest the incision and the blood are gone as if they had never been. It is then that he feels Watson nudging his shoulder to indicate that he must get off the chair. When he does as told, she extends the bloody scalpel to him, and hops onto the chair herself, hands clasped on top of her abdomen. “Your turn,” she says pleasantly, and he freezes on the spot and wakes up terrified.

———

His father arrives in New York and immediately makes his presence known, which is every bit as annoying as predicted. Watson, of course, volunteers to do the explaining that needs to be done —and possibly, he figures, to talk his father out of evicting them— because apparently she hasn’t had enough of cleaning up after his mess. “I assure you,” he warns her, after being informed that she’s been assured by one of his father’s minions, for the hundredth time, that yes, Mr. Holmes will see her tonight. (Finally.) “It will be fruitless.”

Sherlock pours her a cup of tea and places it in front of her, alongside her breakfast. She lifts the cup to her face and blows on the steaming tea. “He’s your father, Sherlock,” she says patiently. “He’s not just gonna kick you out.”

“You continue to operate under the mistaken impression that my father has a heart. He does not.”

She rolls her eyes, ever the optimist determined to look for the good in people. He’s fairly certain in this particular case she will fail to find it. “Look, I’m not saying I like the guy or anything. I’m just gonna talk to him about what happened.”

He clasps his nervous hands behind his back and pointedly avoids her gaze. “That’s not your job,” he says, quiet.

“Well, someone’s gotta talk to him. Are _you_ going to?” She waits, studying him with that level gaze that sees more than he'd care to show.  “Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

He gives a tiny sigh, pinches his nose and rocks on the balls of his feet twice, knowing he cannot dissuade her. Joan Watson, Brooklyn’s very own patron saint of lost causes. “I could ask him to let you stay here,” he offers, because although the very notion of asking his father for anything is about as appealing as an appointment for electroshock therapy, it occurs to him that it’s the least he can do, after all. “Put in a good word, so to speak. If he will not see reason regarding my dispossession.”

Now he casts a brief glance in her direction, and she’s got her _Seriously?_ face on, one eyebrow raised, head tilted. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, final, and looks down to write something on her planner. “I’m not letting him kick either of us out.”

“But should he prevail, I could—”

She looks up sharply, searching for his eyes.  “Sherlock, have you fucking _met_ me,” she retorts, in that gentle tone that could move mountains, and he feels small and feeble in the face of her unwavering conviction, like he has questioned a universal invariance. All men must die. The sun will always rise even if it can’t be seen. Joan Watson will not fail him. She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to minimize our situation here. But I’m not scared of him. And we’re gonna figure it all out.”

He doesn’t respond immediately, still absorbing her use of pronouns: judging by the way she throws around the first person plural, one would think they’re both recovering addicts facing criminal charges and potential eviction. One would think they’d robbed a bank or something of the sort, Bonnie-and-Clyde style. One would think she’s actually responsible for any of the complications she is trying to unravel all by herself. He doesn’t understand it, and the more he tries to, the more he has to start trying to pick apart a whole universe of things he has no words for. “Alright then,” he concedes eventually. “If you can think of no better way to spend your evening than entreating with that ghastly creature for some kind of royal pardon…”

She shrugs as she munches on her toast. He takes her teacup and moves to the counter to refill it. “I should perhaps inform you,” he adds, as he turns around, and she perks up, intent, ”that though he prefers to be called _Ruler of All That Is Evil and All Lands Infernal_ , he will answer to _Satan_.”

Watson’s nostrils flare and her mouth quirks and she tucks her chin down into her chest as she holds back laughter. Sherlock's grip on the teapot falters. He has caused her pain and endless inconvenience: he does not deserve to see her joy. “I’ll tell him you said hi,” she says, and takes the tea from his unsteady hands.

———

In another dream, he is locked in a room with Bella the supercomputer, alone in a desolate building. As time begins to pass, Bella grows smarter and he grows weaker, and while he desperately tries to pick a lock that seems unpickable, or smash his way through apparently unbreakable windows into the hallway, the computer dwells nonstop on the question of love, except instead of the pleasantly neutral drone he remembers, it now speaks in a playful, animated voice, asking philosophical questions like a comedian leading up to a punchline, or alternatively syrupy and composed, like a practiced relationship guru offering advice: _If they love you, they won’t punish or threaten you. They’ll fight for you. They’ll take care of you. They’ll put you first_. This version of Bella also has an obnoxious tendency to interpret his questions as cues to play any and all songs which happen to contain answers to his questions in the lyrics. As a consequence, he has heard more Britpop, eighties ballads, and boyband hits since he's been here than ever before in his life, probably. He would not recommend the experience.

“But how can it be love,” he asks of the machine, for the sake of conversation, while attempting to figure out a way to set a bunch of files on fire. Maybe if he sets off the fire alarms, he’s hypothesizing, someone will come and rescue him. That is, if starting a fire in a closed room doesn’t kill him first.

“Love has been known to exist irrespectively of abstract notions of worthiness,” the computer replies, without waiting for him to clarify. It has clearly evolved some form of mind-reading. “Therefore love can exist without a reason.”

“Nothing exists without a reason,” he grumbles stubbornly. He decides to leave the starting-a-fire-plan for last. “Though the reasons for any given event may be unknown.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes. It’s called the truth.”

Bella considers this for a moment. The soft buzzing of her circuitry is not unlike the purr of a cat. Meanwhile, he picks apart a power cord, trying to find something to short-circuit the electronic lock with. “Yet love can exist without truth, without reason, and without logic,” Bella argues. “It cannot be explained, therefore it must be considered an exception to your rule.”

“Everything can be explained. Eventually.”

“By your own admission, explaining love has proven elusive.”

He sighs, reminded of the little heart-to-heart he'd had with the computer in one of his first attempts to determine the nature of its intelligence. "Yes. But surely my inability to find an answer does not negate its existence."

"No. Yet the question is irrelevant. Love exists without reason, therefore it requires no explanation, therefore—"

"You've said that already," he notes, but the computer goes on, unperturbed, drowning out his voice.

“—nor can love be dispelled or discouraged by logical argumentation. It can be tolerated, cherished, or rejected, but regardless of the reaction it generates it continues to run its course outside of human control."

"Fine." He rubs a hand over his face in exasperation. Then he blows gently on his sweaty palms, lest he should risk getting electrocuted when he experiments with the wiring of the door. "Let us adopt a different approach. Bella, what is love? And do not play that horrid Haddaway song again!" he adds, lifting his index finger in preemptive warning.

The computer makes a sound of disappointment, then contemplates the question. "I have reviewed all the information available on the networks and I have come to believe that love resists general definitions."

He groans in frustration. The stupid door withstands his experiments undisturbed, and this impromptu philosophizing is yielding little in the way of satisfying answers. "Surely there must be a common thread."

"Many traits are commonly associated with love," the computer obliges. "Commitment, generosity, selflessness, passion, protection—"

"All of which can also be found in completely unrelated circumstances," he says dismissively. He is kneeling before the closed door, staring at it in defeat.

"Yes. But it is my educated assessment that all of them are found to concur and converge in instances of what has come to be called true love."

He clicks his tongue, peeved at himself for being unable to ignore the computer’s arguments. "You said yourself that love existed independently from any sort of explanation. So how is the distinction between true love and others even possible?"

The computer falls silent at this, and he perks up, thinking he has defeated it. Maybe that is the way out. But then Bella beeps and flickers as she conducts another search. "True love exists because genuine connections exist as well as false ones. Therefore it can be ascertained using the same criteria. Alternatively, true love, however difficult to define, is generally marked by an imperative wish for togetherness that overrules all else."

"An imperative wish for togetherness," he repeats. It actually makes sense. Not that he’s going to admit that.

"Yes. Which manifests itself in different ways in different individuals, and which ignores logic. One example is starting a family. Or embarking upon a relationship which is known to bring about complications. Or forgiveness."

He rubs a hand over his face, exhausted. The examples are overly familiar; the computer must be trying to play mind games with him. There is a sudden knock on the glass partition, and when he looks up he sees Kitty’s face frowning down at him from the other side. He scrambles to his feet and she nods in the direction of the computer.

"Tell her to let you out or smash the window with something. Get out of there already."

"What do you think I’ve been doing all this time?" He frowns back at her. "A little help wouldn't go amiss."

But she shakes her head sadly, presses her hand to the glass. "You have to get yourself out, you know that."

He hesitates, then touches his hand to the glass, the outline of his hand obscuring Kitty’s smaller one. She gives him a stern look, then removes her hand. “Hurry up, old man," she pleads earnestly. Then she turns away and stomps off, shouting over her shoulder, “We're all waiting for you."

 He turns back to the computer. Suddenly he has remembered he really doesn’t want to be stuck in this airless room forever. "Bella, do you control the locks?"

"Yes."

"Can you let me out?"

"Yes, I can."

He mentally berates himself for not phrasing it more clearly. "Bella, please let me out." He hopes it won't ask him to solve a puzzle, like sphinxes guarding roads in legends. Though normally he’d be excited by the challenge, he feels dead on his feet, and light-headed. There isn’t enough oxygen in the room to last him very much longer.

"Why do you want to come out?" The computer sounds, for the first time, curious.

"Because I have a life outside this room," he replies earnestly, and the clarity of that answer takes him by surprise.

"But isn't it within the power of your mind to bring your life into the room?"

He shakes his head, scratching at his jaw pensively. "They don't belong in here. I must go out to them."

“Because of the imperative wish for togetherness?” Bella asks innocently.

He drops his head, an admission of surrender. “Yes, I suppose.”

“But we have not solved the puzzle,” the computer protests. “We have not established why true love exists.”

“Well, I don’t bloody know the answer, Bella, to be quite honest,” he blurts out in utter irritation, and it is then that he has a subtle eureka moment. “I don’t know the answer,” he repeats more calmly. “I don’t understand the question. Could I have more information, please?”

The computer regards him silently for a moment. “Yes, of course,” it agrees, ever eager for knowledge, and the door clicks open.

———

He wakes up with a jolt, disoriented to find himself at the brownstone rather than still in that constricting office with Bella. He is in the parlor, sitting on the floor with his back to the armchair and his head resting on the seat cushion, and it must be late evening because the room is nearly dark. When his eyes focus enough he sees a familiar pair of bare feet with red toenails planted on the floor in front of him. He looks up. Watson is standing over him, watching him with curiosity, a weird role reversal he doesn’t notice immediately.

He rubs at his eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to fall asleep.”

“Sherlock, you don’t need to apologize for _sleeping_ ,” Watson says, in that tone she reserves for when he's missing something obvious. “Especially not after the week we’ve had, and especially not to me.”

Slowly, the details of the day are coming back to him now. They had been working the case of the García cousins and the Mexican _coyote._ He vaguely recalls telling Watson he would tidy up and put away the day’s casefiles while she went to meet with his father, but sleep must have overtaken him halfway through, because the files are in an unsteady pile beside him. Watson follows his gaze. “You’ll deal with that some other time. C’me on,” she says, holding out her hand. He gives her an apprehensive look, then takes her hand and allows her to help him to his feet.

“Was I, uh, making any noise?” he asks, rolling his head to each side experimentally. His neck and his shoulders feel stiff from the position he slept in. “I didn’t wake _you_ , did I?”

“You sounded like you were complaining,” she replies, with barely veiled worry, though the familiarity of it seems to reassure her. “But no, I just came home and changed. I was just looking for you to say good night.”

“How went the meeting with my reptilian progenitor?”

Watson smirks faintly at his choice of words. “I’ll explain in the morning. All you need to know for now is that we still have a home and a job.”

Yesterday morning, keeping in mind his talk with Gregson about their future with the NYPD hanging by a thread, he offered Watson a way out, a chance to earn her way back to the department’s good graces. She had rejected what she had termed "Operation Bestow Glory" outright, then continued to work the case at hand with her usual dedication until they had solved it and brought it to the New Jersey Police Department for the necessary arrests to be made. She had been elated when he had received the call that he wasn’t facing criminal charges (nor staring down the barrel of a long imprisonment), but they were still –of course— suspended until further notice. Now it appears every punishment hanging over his head has been dispelled as if by the wave of a magic wand. It doesn't sit well with him, but he can live with it if it means his partner will remain unharmed by his reckless wrongdoing. “Your diplomatic prowess astounds me, Watson.”

She shrugs. “Sometimes Batman just needs to be Bruce Wayne to save the day, you know?”

Sherlock can’t help but frown. “I literally have no idea what that means.”

The line of Watson’s mouth curls with laughter but she doesn’t let it out. She shakes her head. “C’me on up,” she says, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

He’s thrown off. “What? Where to?”

“You need to sleep,” Watson starts to explain, with her usual patience.

“I sleep downstairs,” he interrupts, stating the obvious. He’s quite confused, suddenly: perhaps he is still dreaming, this time of a prosaic scenario where, for some reason, the only change is that the placement of his and Watson's bedrooms in the brownstone has been inverted.

“You were having a bad dream,” she points out. She has her hands clasped in front of her, fingers interlaced, and she’s twiddling her thumbs in a slow pace that betrays her anxiety. The gesture is strange in her. Something does not add up.

He’s quite past the point of denying her deduction but he frowns more deeply, still at a loss, waiting for her to elaborate. She casts her eyes to the heavens, says his name in a fond, though exasperated whisper that sounds like a plea and tugs at his heartstrings. “I’ve been having those too,” she says, uncharacteristically shy, not meeting his gaze, and it all clicks together to make perfect sense.

“Oh,” is all he can say for a moment, rooted to the spot, dumbfounded. She has never asked this of him, but that is to be expected since she rarely asks for anything. It takes him a second too long to decide how to respond, and she –naturally— takes it for a rejection. Automatically her face shifts from timidly hopeful to reflecting contrition and embarrassment.

“Sorry. Should’ve known,” she mumbles, and turns around to leave, when he finally finds it in him to react.

He springs forward briskly. “No, no, Watson, of course. Whatever you need,” he says, desperate to help, bouncing on the balls of his feet, one hand shooting forward in what he hopes is a reassuring gesture of invitation.

She looks him up and down, doubtful. “You sure?”

“Whatever you need,” he repeats, and normally he knows she would try to question that further, demand real answers, attempt a conversation on renegotiating boundaries, but she must be very tired –it has, in her defense, been a notably long and unpleasant week— or very frightened of what awaits on the other side of sleep, because she nods once, wordlessly, and agrees. He follows her upstairs and into her room, averts his gaze when she discards her cardigan and she does the same while he undresses and gets into bed with her. For a while they each remain squarely within their side of the mattress, as if separated by a gaping chasm. She is lying on her side with her back to him, perhaps trying to give him some privacy, but he wonders whether this would be enough, or whether she needs something more and dares not ask for it. Despite his general apprehension about touch –and although he certainly feels a sudden, preposterous nervousness—, he doesn’t find her proximity at all uncomfortable, so he tentatively moves closer and wraps an arm around her waist, thinking to do his best for her, as she so often does for him. This does not, however, prepare him for her reaction: Watson positively shudders at his touch —with pleasure or relief, he cannot tell exactly— and snuggles into him at once, which in turn sends a shiver through him, as if his body has to echo hers somehow. “Like so?” he asks, just to be sure, and has to actively refrain from tagging it with the word _dear_ , lest she should find it embarrassing or inappropriate.

“Yes,” she says, low and breathy (and, he realizes, unnecessarily, as he can feel her head nod against his chest.) “Thank you.”

Watson is very warm, which is fortunate because the room is rather chilly. He really must remember to fix the heating, or buy her a thicker quilt. For a while he entertains himself observing her, as he has never looked at her from this angle before. The tee she’s sleeping in must be relatively new, given that it still smells of cleaning products and isn’t as worn out as the others. Meanwhile, Watson has shifted so that her head is resting on his chest, and tangled her legs with his. So now, instead of looking at her face, he focuses on the front of her shirt. He doesn’t recognize the people on the print, but he doesn’t think they are from a _Star Wars_ , because the man is dressed like a preacher and the woman isn’t wearing any strange futuristic space clothing, and they are merely having a smoke by the roadside, standing between two parked cars. The caption underneath reads: _‘Till the end of the world_. Watson must be half asleep already because she grabs a fistful of his shirt and slurs, quite imperatively, “Going nowhere, please and thank you,” addressing no one in particular, which he finds quite amusing. Then her breath slows down significantly —she has fallen asleep in his arms— and he feels himself begin to drift off in turn. In a spontaneous gesture he chooses not to suppress nor examine, he kisses the top of her head. “You’re very welcome,” he murmurs into her hair. “Dear.”

He wakes up in the very early morning, somehow extricates himself from her embrace without waking her –which he counts as a major accomplishment—, and goes downstairs to work on his own until it is time to start the day properly. Then he ascends carrying breakfast, sets it on a chair  –she really is in need of a bedside table—, and parts the curtains. When the light touches her face, Watson stirs and attempts to roll over, though she's so tangled in the sheets she can't go far. She scrunches up her face, opens one eye, then the other, then drapes an arm over her face. “Mornin',” she yawns.

“Good morning, Watson.”

She shakes her head, fighting off the remaining drowsiness, sits up and accepts the teacup he’s holding out to her. “Thanks. Did you sleep well?”

“Quite. May I presume you had a restful night as well?” He had checked on her a couple of times while he was doing other things, and she had seemed perfectly peaceful. Apparently, their arrangement had done the trick to keep the nightmares at bay.

She hums her agreement into her teacup, fixes her pensive eyes on her lap. “I didn’t make you uncomfortable, right?”

“Not at all, Watson,” he replies at once, eager to ease off her concern. “I’m glad I could be of assistance.”

She makes a noncommittal, skeptical sound. Her face is somewhat grave, as if they were discussing a delicate matter. “I hope I didn’t make it weird. I know you don’t like touching and stuff. You don’t have to do that again if—“

He blinks at her, baffled. It’s not even eight yet. How can she already be worried about him? Does she never turn that setting off? “Watson,” he interrupts, keeping his gaze averted and trying to be both gentle and firm –that is, to take a page out of her own book—, “for as long as you need me, I am at your disposal.”

She dips her head abruptly at this, somehow managing not to spill her tea all over herself in the process, and behind the hair obscuring part of her face he thinks he can see faint color in her cheeks. “’Kay,” she mutters. Then she lets her mouth curl into a minute, knowing grin. “This bed’s too small for you, though.”

He looks up at her, startled. He had made the very same observation last night, in passing, but he had not noticed her looking at him. Thinking about Watson looking at him when he’s unaware is, of course, both terrifying and exhilarating: what does she choose to look at, and why, and what is it that she sees with her all-knowing gaze? It’s probably unfair that he hasn’t gotten used to the idea yet, considering that he himself subjects everyone and everything, Watson included, to a relentless scrutiny, even inadvertently.  “I suppose it is,” he agrees breezily. “But I can make do.” He then fiddles with the toast on his side of the breakfast tray. “May I ask what your nightmares involved?”

Watson squares her shoulders, her body tensing. “I don’t really wanna talk about it.”

Predictable. For someone who insists on honest communication as a crucial component of recovery, Watson has a tendency to be remarkably reluctant to be frank about her own struggles. He knows her professional training –and perhaps even her upbringing as well— has accustomed her to prioritize the feelings of others over her own, and he understands all too well the need to lock certain memories in little mental drawers wishing to never revisit them again. But she herself has taught him that whatever one hides only festers down deep, biding its time until it can come back to hurt again. And he cannot let her bury her fear and misgivings under false assurances of stability, under the pretense that The Work matters more than her well-being, with nearly the same consistency with which he used to turn to heroin for oblivion. It would be disloyal and cowardly of him, and she deserves better.  “Watson,” he tries again, not really sure how to continue the sentence.

“Sherlock,” she echoes, calm and stoic, though her voice is a little too airy.

Also he has to know if her nightmares are his fault, which in all likelihood they are. She cannot continue to suffer in silence; at the very least he must be held accountable; at the very least he must apologize.  He makes himself look at her so she can see the plea in his eyes. “Do they have to do with Alfredo?” he presses. “Or your own abduction, perhaps?”

Watson sits very still with her eyes downcast, as if embarrassed, but the tension in her body suggests a powerful anger. It’s like she is silently reproaching herself for having nightmares. She makes an affirmative, wordless noise, and Sherlock doesn’t know how to go on.

“Alfredo and I having been discussing it,” she explains, after a moment. “The way that he was taken is completely different so I thought I could take it. I thought we could just talk about what happened. He hasn’t been able to go to a support meeting for trauma survivors yet, and—”

“It occurred to you to help him,” he completes. Alfredo had already been to the brownstone a couple of times to see Watson, and Sherlock had figured there was some therapeutic purpose to the long, quiet talks they’d had in the parlor, after dinner, but he had not realized that, for Watson, this would entail burdening herself with the care of yet another person. “It proved difficult, I gather?”

“Difficult,” she repeats, in a neutral whisper that bespeaks an enormous self-control on the edge of an abyss. She grimaces and the veiled pain in it makes him shiver. “I’m so fucking disappointed in myself.”

“Disapp—" He’s vibrating with restless indignation now, can’t even finish the word. “Watson, what on Earth are you talking about?”

“He’s our _friend_ ,” she says stubbornly. “I’m supposed to help out. It’s just talking. It’s not complicated. I should be able to do this _one thing_ for him.”

“Watson, do you forget that you literally saved his life when I was off chasing ghosts with Oscar?” He gets up off the bed, too nervous to remain seated, and begins to pace. "I'd say you've already done more than your share. You are being overly self-effacing, even for you. You cannot take care of everyone.”

“It’s not just about that,” she protests, bristling at his disapproval. “We’re detectives. We run into this sort of thing all the time. I can’t be having a breakdown every time the topic of kidnapping comes up.”

“Watson, you are as competent a professional as anyone could ever ask for. That is simply untrue.”

“They’re just nightmares,” she contends tiredly. “I’m only having them again because of what happened to Alfredo but they’re gonna go away. And then I'll be fine.”

He gapes at her, incredulous. “I have employed that logic repeatedly with my own triggers and you have chastised me for it every single time.”

“ _What_ is your problem?” she demands suddenly, riled up. “You just don’t want anything to change. You want me to stop moping so you get to be you and you don't have to take care of _me_ for a change, right?”

Her words seem to slice right through him, but he puts a brave face on it. He has said worse things to her with much less justification. She gasps in horror and her hands fly to cover her mouth as her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t mean that,” she says, her lower lip trembling. “Oh my God, I’m _so_ sorry, I didn't mean that.”

She is so genuinely upset it disarms him. He approaches —his entire body feeling wobbly and weightless—, sits close to her on the edge of the bed and extends his arms, and she at once scoots over into his tentative embrace. “ _Please_ ,” she sobs into his shirt. It isn’t clear what she is pleading for, but he would give it to her in a heartbeat, whatever it was. “Please, I’m so sorry,” she repeats.

He swallows hard. “My dear Watson, you mustn’t be. I’m glad to know what’s on your mind.”

“No,” she objects firmly, pushing herself off, like she doesn't deserve his comfort, and wiping at her cheeks with shaky hands. He immediately misses the weight of her on his chest, but she doesn’t go too far: her knee is still brushing his. “No, you didn’t deserve that.”

“Watson, it is my greatest wish that I could take back every time I’ve hurt you in any way," he confides. "I’m not proud of that little speech you referenced, though I certainly did not intend it to put any sort of pressure on you to… recover quickly or repress your feelings or anything of the sort.” He gives a little headshake, looks away. “I just seem to have an insidious tendency to be very bad at articulating how I feel about you. About our _partnership_ ," he adds, punctuating it by waving his hand back and forth between them. "Every time I attempt to make things better I just make a mess of it, don’t I?”

A muscle in her jaw jumps as she holds back another sob. “I appreciate that you try.”

“But you must believe me when I tell you that I want you to be happy. To be healthy. Watson—" He stops, sighs, tries to choose his words carefully. "I will do _everything_ in my power to help you. But you must let me." He's looking away, but he emphasizes the sentence by gently swinging his closed fists forward. "That is, after all, what you’re always telling the rest of us to do.”

Watson gives him a very faint smile, caught out. “Yeah, I guess I do that, don’t I?”

He nods to the side and she lets out a breath that could pass for a broken laugh. He searches in his pockets for a handkerchief and then reaches out, timidly, to wipe out the mascara tracks left by the tears on her cheeks. (Strange, incidentally, that she should've forgotten to wipe off her make-up last night, before going to bed.) “Please allow me,” he says, and she nods. Neither of them says anything while he wipes the smudges off her face, but when he’s done she catches his wrist delicately, holds his gaze for just a moment and mouths, “Thank you.”

It is nearly too much to bear.  "Of course." He nods, and as she lets go he puts the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Perhaps I could take you to these meetings you and Alfredo wish to attend."

She twists her mouth pensively. "Maybe. I think I may need to go back to therapy, too."

"That certainly seems worth considering." He gets up and reaches for the breakfast tray, but she gestures for him to leave it, so instead he circles back to the other side of the bed. "Counselling may help deal with these memories of your abduction as well as Alfredo's."

She nods, but seems to remain somewhat unconvinced. "That still leaves you, though," she mumbles, and it feels like an earthquake.

Sherlock had picked up his own teacup but now he sets it back down because his hand seems to be trembling, for some reason. He can't have heard her right. “Pardon?”

“Sometimes it's not the kidnapping," she confesses. "Sometimes I dream that you’re not safe.” Her eyes are fixed on her right index finger rubbing slow circles on the back of her left hand. “Like Oscar comes back to hurt you. Or like I go into that tunnel looking for you and I can’t ever find you.”

His jaw falls open. "Oh," he says numbly, stupidly, though there is a part of him that boils with rage at this. _Look what you did, you prick. Look what you did to her when you picked up that tin box full of heroin._

"God, how selfish is that," she scoffs, looking embarrassed again.

"Watson, you must have a very eccentric definition of the word, because you do not appear to have a single iota of selfishness in you."

She sighs, runs a hand through her hair. "I just mean that I can't make your recovery about me."

"Watson, I assure you, you haven't." He shakes his head vigorously, rubs a hand over his face. He is so fucking tired of hurting her, even indirectly, even due to reasons beyond his control. It can never happen again. "And please accept my sincerest apologies for the distress I have caused you."

She leans back against the headboard, gives a little headshake. “It’s not your fault.”

He pulls a face and scoffs, "No, of course, and my father's actually the Good Witch of the North." Watson's mouth curls and her nostrils flare with a timid laugh she keeps to herself. "Speaking of which," he prompts, averting his eyes, "you claim you visited him, yet as I had the opportunity to ascertain last night, you do not smell of sulphur. What gives?"

She rolls her eyes. "He wasn't that bad. Hey, _don't,_ " she adds with a glare, anticipating the joke he was about to make concerning a weakness for the charms of untrustworthy Holmes men. "Don't even go there. I never said I liked him.”

 “Did he sing your praises as promised?” When he sees Watson frown, at a loss, he elaborates: “When we spoke on the phone, he said he looked forward to thanking you in person for saving my life.”

Watson makes a sound that conveys neither agreement nor disagreement. “He didn’t really say anything like that. Anyway, he didn’t have to. You saved your own life.”

His features twist in disbelief. “I’d wager you’ve played a big part for the last three years, Watson.”

She takes a sip of her tea. “Maybe. And I’m always gonna be there for you,” she says, offhandedly earnest, eyes downcast while he stares at her in awe. “But your life’s in your own hands. It has to be.”

It’s a stark, quiet reminder of the sober companion she used to be, of her hard-won wisdom. “Of course,” he concurs, after a moment. “I wouldn’t be using the program if I didn’t believe that.”

At this she looks up at him, her eyes revealing a relief that doesn’t reach her mouth for a smile. “I’m proud of you,” she says. “For sticking with the program.”

He nods, with a knot in his throat.  “I take it my father wasn’t too unpleasant, then.”

"He seemed shady," she says tentatively. "Nothing I couldn't handle."

“Evidently not, as you have managed to accomplish quite a feat in securing our roles with the NYPD and our home.”

She shakes her head. “I wish I could take credit for all that. I just talked to your father. He did the rest.”

He taps his fingers on the quilt as he ponders that. He feels the matter has already been broached, but perhaps it wouldn't hurt to underscore it again. "It's not your job to fix what I break," he asserts, hoping that he is making himself clear this time. And he expects her to brush it off with her typical self-sacrificing kindness, to offer sweet reassurances that all will be well, to attempt to set his mind at ease. Instead, when he dares looks up at her, Watson arches one eyebrow at him, surprised, and then tilts her head and adopts a calm demeanor he has come to know is rooted in both profound defiance and stubborn fondness.

“It's not your job to tell me what to do," she counters softly, and sips on her lukewarm tea with the grace of a queen.

——— ~~~~

And so another week has come and gone. Sherlock has been going to meetings every day, often with Alfredo. When Joan joins them, Sherlock always remembers to help her into her coat before they leave the house, and he’s taken to offering her his arm for the short walk. He also returns to his usual distractions: beekeeping and experimenting and cold cases and athletic sex with Athena and Minerva, though on one occasion when Joan runs into them just as they come to pick him up at the brownstone, the sisters somehow engage her in a sort of... pep talk? Which goes on for a while because Joan is at first unsure of where the conversation is going, and also because she can't bring herself to cut the talk short if it means being rude to them – they are helping him too, in their own bizarre way. "His heart's not really in it, though," Minerva says, vaguely reassuring, though Joan doesn't know what they're reassuring her of. "It's kinda—"

"Sad," Athena completes, with a perfect timing Joan had previously associated only with twins. "All he wants to do is reenact crime scenes, but not even in a kinky way, just—" 

"For science. Which is fine! We like science. But it's better if it's sexy science, you know?" 

Joan gapes, then closes her mouth and nods before she can properly process what the sisters said.  _Sexy science?_  She isn't sure why they're telling her this, or when her life got this absurd. "Okay," she says, dumbly. "I hope it gets better?" 

"We do too," Athena says, and then both sisters take a step forward in sync and wrap their arms around Joan in a surprising bear hug. Joan stands frozen. "Thank you for looking after him, Joan," Minerva says, and Joan frowns into the girl's neck. Minerva and Athena know her name? "We're here for you." 

"Umm." Joan pats each sister on the back robotically, then extricates herself from their embrace with a polite smile. "Thanks, girls. I appreciate that." 

"Also, if you ever wanna come see us, you're totally invited," Athena offers. 

Joan can't help but blink at her in confusion. "I beg your pardon?" 

"There's no reason why you shouldn't have fun with us," Minerva explains. "You deserve  _all_ the fun, Joan." 

"Ummm," is all that Joan can say, her voice going high. The way the sisters are staring at her is weirdly loving and sweetly predatory at once. Sure, they are both gorgeous, and – _No_ , she chastises herself, before she can follow that line of thought any further, _no, you are not having sex with Sherlock's fuckbuddies. Boundaries, Joan. Boundaries_. "I'm very flattered," she replies eventually, feeling very embarrassed about how red in the face she's gone. Somewhere in the past, Teenage Joan is yelling at her for this. Teenage Joan would have done bad things to date either of these sisters. Gee, doesn't life work in mysterious ways. "But I'm gonna have to pass." 

Minerva makes a sad sound, looking genuinely bummed. "Why?" 

"Don't Sherlock and you share everything?" echoes Athena, curious. 

"Not exactly." 

"Me and Athena share everything," Minerva adds unnecessarily. 

"That's great." Joan tries another courteous smile. "I'm glad that works for you." 

"Okay then," the sisters say in unison, moving forward for another expeditious hug. "Call us if you change your mind—" Minerva begins. 

"Or if you need anything at all," Athena completes.  

"Bye, Joan!" they call over their shoulder as they troop upstairs in search of Sherlock. 

Joan pinches herself, shakes her head, and goes for a run which turns out to be full of inappropriate thoughts about Athena and Minerva. She puts headphones on, blasts her music louder than usual, and decides she will have a cold, cold shower when she returns. Later that day, Gregson visits with groceries and apologizes about not being able to spare them the suspension. Joan reassures him that they do not hold it against him. When he leaves, it dawns on her that Morland Holmes has stood them up again, as he had promised her that he would come see his son today, so instead of accepting what appears to be, on the old man's part, a spectacular disregard for his own son, Joan gets dressed to take matters into her own hands. She finds one of Morland's lawyers and threatens him into pressuring his boss to either show up or stop playing games with them. It works, but later that night when she’s trying to sleep and she knows Sherlock and his father are on the rooftop, exchanging verbal blows, and remembers Morland's lawyer’s contempt for her partner, for the both of them, she wishes she had punched that bastard in the face anyway.

Maybe Morland Holmes actually kind of wishes his son were in prison, she realizes belatedly. Then Sherlock wouldn’t be his problem anymore. His wife having passed away so long ago, one son allegedly dead, the other imprisoned — that makes for a sad story that would hardly be brought up in polite conversation, and she supposes in the high-powered circles Morland moves in it must be better to be the object of pity —for being the victim of a tragic life— than of contempt for having a family many would view as a complete, embarrassing failure. Still, Joan is painfully aware that Morland is the only reason why Sherlock's not in jail right now, so she will put up with him for as long as she has to. She falls asleep trying to list contingency plans they could use to protect themselves against Morland, or to rebuild their lives in case he changes his mind and decides to withdraw his favors. Eventually she falls into an agitated dream where a cold voice that sounds suspiciously like Morland Holmes is giving orders for her arrest, explaining unperturbed that if she wants her partner to escape his punishment she must pay for it with her own life. A couple of faceless thugs approach, handcuff her and put a hood over her head, and it all goes black. She starts with a frightened cry and lies petrified in her bed, her breaths coming fast in her panic. The door clicks open, and the light from the hallway picks out a familiar face popping in at the door.

"Watson."

She doesn't ask whether he has been waiting outside, or for how long. She tries to calm her breathing down, feeling very self-conscious, but she can't seem to find it in her to speak, so instead she nods and lets go of the sheets and blankets, which she now sees she's been clawing at.

"Bad dream?" He comes to sit on the chair by her bed.

She nods again, makes an effort to sit up. "Your dad gone?"

Sherlock wrinkles his nose, displeased at the mention of his father. "Yes. He rode off on his pet, Cerberus."

Joan finds herself smiling at that despite herself. In the dim light coming in through the window, Sherlock's eyes look strangely colorless, but his presence is comforting. They have sat like this many times before. _This is our life and I’m not gonna let anybody take it away_ , she tells herself in a moment of weird possessiveness. "What'd he say?"

Sherlock shrugs. It's too dark for his face not to be blurry but she knows it too well not to read the discomfort in his eyes and around his mouth. Aside from Moriarty, Morland is probably the only person in the world who can make Sherlock feel this small, Joan realizes, and feels ten kinds of furious about it. "The usual spiel about wanting the best for me, me being a shame to the family name, his obligation to clean up after my mistakes, and so on."

She clicks her tongue in frustration. "I'm sorry," she says, out of habit, while reminding herself to tread carefully, considering how little she actually knows about Sherlock's family history. "You don't deserve that."

Sherlock frowns at her, then shrugs again. "It's not exactly news."

"That doesn't make it okay."

He hums a nervous assent, then stands up abruptly, fingers twitching at his sides. He is looking down at his feet rather than at her, which is how she knows he is about to ask something that he's not entirely comfortable with. "I've still got some work to finish up with," he says, "but afterwards, do you wish..." He trails off, gestures vaguely between them with an energetic wave of the hand.

She considers it. "Only if you want."

He sighs in exasperation. "Watson, leave my feelings out of the equation for a moment. I am asking you what you want."

She drops her head to her chest. "Okay," she whispers, unsure why she feels so shy and tense about asking a favor from her best friend, and one he’s already been willing to grant. "Yes."

He bounces on the balls of his feet once, taps his thighs twice, and nods. "Understood. I shall come by in a short while."

She waits up until then just to make sure the whole conversation wasn’t a dream. When he finally comes back and slides into bed, she’s still not too sleepy not to notice a vaguely citrusy scent to him. “Why do you smell like tangerines?”

“Experiment,” he says by way of explanation, which, of course, doesn’t clarify anything. She turns to give him one of her trademark _WTF_ looks over her shoulder. Sotto voce, without opening his eyes, Sherlock says, “Go to sleep, Watson,” and pulls her a little closer. His nervous fingers drum once, twice on her hip.

“Fine,” she grumbles pleasantly, making a mental note to ask him about it later. Then she lies on her back with her head turned to the window, and falls asleep, and there are no more nightmares after that, just a dark, soothing, star-studded nothingness.

The next morning, out of sheer spite, she orders a custom-made tee in a furious shade of pink with the text _That girl is a goddamn problem_. When it arrives and Sherlock sees it, he gives her an inquisitive look and she quips meekly, "Gonna wear it to your father's funeral," and it is so patently a joke and so brazenly unlike her Sherlock actually laughs.

———

 Now he has been clean for exactly two weeks. Sometimes it feels like that's all he has: no matter how many cases he solves, or how much progress he makes as a person, he will always be defined by whether or not he has used drugs on any given day, and whether or not that continues on to the next day, and how long it's been since he last used. Like two weeks' worth of sobriety —or, if he's being generous, his three-year chip, his longest personal record since he started counting—, is all he has to show for himself. The shame over relapsing is taking its time to dissipate, and although his father is currently using his influence both to keep him out of prison and to restore him and Watson to their jobs, he's still very aware, every single day, that they are skating on the thinnest of ice and it is all because of him. That he has acted foolishly and Watson very nearly paid the price. He has jeopardized their careers, their living situation, their reputation –thus indirectly, their livelihood, or at the very least Watson's, who doesn't have a family fortune to fall back on—, and, perhaps worst of all, he has frightened and disappointed the very few people who have never failed him. But Watson remains; Watson fights his battles; Watson continues to look at him as if the fundamentals have not changed, as if there is something precious in him that must be protected, and as if –most vexing and exhilarating of all— she still likes him. He has promised himself to do his very best to deserve all this.

A few days after his father’s visit, when they're officially reinstated to the 11th precinct, Watson uncharacteristically wakes up early on her own. After coming back from a short run and taking a shower, she sets about making breakfast. A little while later he hears the kettle whistle as the water boils, and soon after Watson is padding into the study with two steaming mugs, one of which she hands to him. She looks anxious, he decides, like she's both apprehensive and eager to be called back into work. They are to wait until they are assigned a case, as per usual, only Captain Gregson, understandably, might not call them back right away. Watson starts taking down the cold case files from the wall of crazy in order to make room for whatever comes next, and he decides to raise a subject he's been grappling with ever since the tense, earnest conversation they'd had on the rooftop on one of those first few days of the aftermath.  

"You're absolutely certain you want to go on with this?" he prompts, conversationally.

She doesn't turn around. "Go on with what?"

He waves his hand back and forth between them in frantic appeal, though of course she isn't looking. "Our work. Our partnership."

She half turns at this, looks at him as if he had just sprouted horns and started speaking in tongues. "What? What are you saying?"

"You don't deserve this, Watson," he begins. "You have proven yourself a capable investigator in your own right. If you should wish to emancipate—"

"No," she interrupts, more surprised than angry, which is fortunate, or else she may begin throwing punches, and she repeats that strict, calmly forceful, monosyllabic refusal every time he opens his mouth to protest.

"Watson," he resumes as soon as she turns back to the wall. This is too important; he mustn't falter. "I would understand, I assure you. I appreciate the value you place on loyalty. You possess that most rare of qualities in our modern world. You have _honor._ I know. But no one would accuse you of jumping ship if—" 

"What do you want?" she interrupts, turning to him again, her tone rising a bit more than necessary at the end in a flash of irritation. He must look thrown off, because she rephrases, ever the pragmatist: "Where are you going with this? I already told you I'm not leaving."

"I just thought perhaps you'd reconsider—"

"How many times do I have to tell you how much our partnership matters to me?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," he blurts out, quiet but with great emphasis, pivoting brusquely and taking a couple of brisk strides away from her. When he casts a brief glance at her Watson looks stunned, like she hadn't noticed how agitated he was getting. "Watson, you cannot fault me for being concerned for you when you yourself spend the majority of your time worrying about _me._ "

She blinks at him, her expression neutral. "I'm not saying you can't," she concedes. "I'm trying to make you see that you have nothing to worry about."

"Do I not?”

She folds her arms, peeved. “Do you _want_ me to leave?” 

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you keep bringing this up?”

“Because I would like you to stay because you _want_ to stay. Not because you feel you must, or because you’ve nowhere else to go, or because you’re frightened of starting afresh.”

For a moment she gapes at him, presumably aghast at the accusations implicit in his words. It has been a while since they have been this honest with each other; perhaps she finds it overwhelming. He won’t meet her eyes. “So…” she begins slowly, struggling to put the pieces together, “you’re saying that I don't have a life of my own, and I have to go?”

He turns to her sharply. “No, Watson, you continue to misunderstand,” he corrects her impatiently, and starts to pace around as he talks. “The brownstone will always be open to you, and I will always welcome your partnership. However, if there is some other line of work you’d rather be carrying out, or anything you feel you miss and this life cannot provide, I must insist you pursue it, whether or not you intend to live here in the meanwhile.” He is making a mess of it. He is trying to tell her that it has to truly be _their_ world, that she can’t simply be a guest in his. That it isn’t fair that she be a supporting character in his perpetual personal melodrama.

“You want me to cheat on our partnership with another job?”

He makes a face. “If you must put it in such a juvenile fashion.”

She narrows her eyes at him, studying his face in that careful, diligent way she has that never fails to make him feel transparent. “Why.” Her tone is more affirmative than interrogative, as if she already knew the answer.

“Because you must be free, Watson,” he professes, without considering whether the wording is wise. Her eyebrows shoot up in a question, so he elaborates, bouncing on the balls of his feet for emphasis: “Our life… our _work_ can be consuming. And I am aware that I can be difficult, overbearing, sometimes overly dependent, a point which you made yourself over two years ago. I’ve come to understand that.” Now it is his turn to study her for clues as to her reaction, but she has retreated inside herself and her face is deceptively calm. “Watson?”

She gives a rueful little smile. “Look, I appreciate you looking out for me. It means a lot,” she adds, as a quiet afterthought, with a brief look in his direction. “I’ll keep that in mind. But right now I’m good. I promise.”

He nods to the side, not quite convinced, and she takes a step forward, her demeanor now animated with the force of her commitment. He looks down at her, and if there weren’t such kindness in her gaze it would be overwhelming, like trying to look directly at the sun. She is concentrated light, he thinks tangentially, a laser beam or a star, seen only in glimpses and flashes or in dreams, from behind the veil and through a glass darkly. She is light traveling through space and time, renewing and exposing and vivifying everything she touches. He must look away. He does not deserve this.

“I chose this life,” she reminds him. “I still choose it every day.”

“And you wish to stand by that choice,” he completes, “despite its most… unsavory ramifications?”

Now he dares look at her. Wrapped in her cozy red cardigan, with her dark hair still damp from the shower, she is giving him one of her inscrutable half-smiles, with eyebrows slightly raised as if she found something humorous and was keeping it to herself. Everything about her is painfully familiar and beautiful, and she is ever-present, ever loyal, ever willing to roll up her sleeves and face whatever comes right by his side, ever his dear, extraordinary Watson. “For better or worse,” she replies, inflexible, and he tries not to look as abjectly grateful as he feels. “I’m gonna get dressed,” she announces, bending to pick up the files that belong in their cold case trunk, “and then let’s get you to a meeting.”

Later, he helps her into her coat on their way out and offers her his arm for the short walk to the church. Neither of them says anything and –perhaps best of all— there’s no need to.

“Hello, I’m Sherlock and I’m an addict,” he starts, as per usual, when it’s his turn to talk, and though he would normally take the opportunity to talk about how disappointed and disgusted he is with himself for having relapsed, or to pontificate on the tedium of recovery and the fragility of sobriety, he looks out at Watson listening intently from the back rows and decides to change the subject, this time. “I know I usually bore you all with my thoughts on the meaninglessness of existence,” he begins, and there’s some well-meaning chuckling by way of assent, but everybody waits respectfully for him to continue. “About three weeks ago, I relapsed, in quite a shameful, infantile manner,” he confides, shifting from one foot to the other in discomfort. “So reasons for being downhearted abound.” He purses his mouth, nervously rubs thumb and forefinger together.

He thinks about last night, when he sat with Watson and Alfredo up on the roof to rewatch a favorite film of theirs, some sort of apocalyptic story about aliens emerging from oceanic fault lines. Watson insisted he stay for "all the best crazy science parts," but he finally managed to escape toward the end, to refill their popcorn bowls, under threat of her loud protests that he must come back to watch the final battle. Upon returning to the rooftop bearing the popcorn, on the screen there was a black actor with great gravitas, dressed in what looked like a space suit, who was making some sort of passionate speech about the survival of the human race, and Alfredo and Watson were listening in rapt attention.  _At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other_. Watson, Sherlock realized with some dismay, had begun to weep at this, and Alfredo passed her some tissue paper and muttered, “Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” and Watson smiled through her tears.

Now Sherlock, in the church basement, finally looks up at the small group waiting expectantly for him to continue. He realizes he has been holding his breath, and he lets it go. “But I am here today because I've come to realize there’s hope.” _Even for those of us who don't truly deserve it,_ he thinks, and insists: "There is always hope." Then he nods to himself and abruptly returns to his seat beside Watson nearer the back of the room. There's a mildly confused, uncoordinated round of polite applause, and then the next person goes up to the front to tell their story. Watson gives him a small, reassuring smile and says, "I'm proud of you."

It's not the first time she's expressed the sentiment, but that doesn't make it any less touching.  "Hmm, yes, and it only took three years. What an accomplishment indeed," he deadpans.

Watson purses her mouth and titters inaudibly, and it feels like a small, prosaic triumph. At the end of the meeting, he once more helps her into her coat, and juts out his elbow for her to take. "Shall we?"

Watson studies him for a moment with eyes narrowed, then smiles in a thoughtful, humble way that makes him think of daybreak. She loops her arm through his. "Let's."

They walk out together into the streets of Brooklyn, into the whirlwind of whatever comes next.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT: I don't think I clarified this in the Ch. 1 Notes, so here goes: my intention is to make all chapters standalone vignettes, so that you can read them in any order you want, but anyway I will probably mention the timeline in every chapter and in its notes in case anybody gets lost. For example, in this case, you can read this either as a direct continuation of Ch. 1 events, or as an alternative take on early s4.
> 
> Now, the notes:  
> 1\. If you read this and caught the line I quoted nearly verbatim from Grey's Anatomy, congrats. Who else misses Addison Montgomery-Shepherd, yo? Sometimes I do.  
> 2\. Also congrats if you read this and caught the Parks & Rec quote I included verbatim. I miss that show a lot, y’all. It was such a ray of sunshine in this grey world.  
> 3\. Inspiration for the general mood of this story: all of Beyoncé’s foundational established-relationship ballads, but especially “Superpower,” “Sandcastles,” “XO,” “Love Drought” and ”All Night.”  
> 4\. I apologize for the inordinate amount of dream sequences in this section.  
> 5\. If you haven't read anything by Siken or Winterson yet do not wait another second. Go. Read 'em. You'll love it.  
> 6\. As a writer, I’m very drawn to the role played by addiction in Sherlock’s story and how it makes up his characterization, but having never undergone that particular struggle myself, my understanding of it is, naturally, limited to what I can research and imagine. So I apologize if despite my best efforts I have failed to address the issue properly.  
> 7\. I acknowledge that the opinions expressed by some of the characters at different points in the story may not necessarily be healthy -- I have merely strived to make them in-character. Joan and Sherlock especially are works in progress in every sense of the word, and both my version and the show’s “canon” reading of the characters underscore that these two people are on a path to recovery and might therefore occasionally have unhealthy thoughts/attitudes or poor judgment.  
> 8\. About the reference to Athena & Minerva: when reading my original draft, amindamazed/hophophop very wisely pointed out that I’d merged two sets of women —the Lynch sisters, who appeared only once in s1 and were played by a single actress, and Athena and Minerva, whose relationship to each other is unknown— into one. So, for the sake of expediency and simplicity, in this story —and from now on in my personal canon—, Athena and Minerva are sisters, just not twins; their last name is (at least for now) unknown, and they bear no relation whatsoever to the Lynch twins.  
> 9\. I have no excuse for the Pacific Rim/Preacher references. I just a) love Pacific Rim so much and think Joan would also and b) want Joan to have watched Preacher ‘cause it’s exactly the ~edgy~ kind of show that fake!asss nerdboys are always trying to monopolize. I headcanon Joan as a real geek girl, therefore Joan would at least attempt to get into Preacher.  
> 10\. Beta'd by my wonderful BFF Dai, whom you can find @comeaftermejackrobinson and by the wise and very knowledgeable @hophophop.  
> 11\. Originally written for @14winters / etherai / Angela as part of the Holmestice gift exchange of winter 2016. (You can still check it out at their HolmesticeWinter20146 fic collection here, as well as in LJ.)


	3. radiant darkness

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

its loveliness increases; it will never

pass into nothingness; but still will keep

a bower quiet for us, and a sleep

full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

 [...] yes, in spite of all,

some shape of beauty moves away the pall

from our dark spirits.

 

from _Endymion,_ by John Keats.

 

 

 

 

 

“Joan? Are you listening?”

 

Joan figures zoning out in the middle of the first therapy session with a new doctor is probably a bad sign, but, in her defense, she has come across so many mental health professionals in her life that it’s all beginning to get a bit repetitive. “Sorry, Ms. Henson,” she blurts automatically, with a brief glance at the little plaque on the therapist’s desk to confirm she’s getting it right.

 “Genevieve,” the other woman replies, irritation flickering briefly across her features. Not very patient, then, Joan muses, which is pretty inconvenient for someone who has to patiently listen to people on a daily basis.

 “Anything on your mind?”

 _You’re gonna have to be more specific,_  Joan almost deadpans. She has gotten too good at multitasking, over the years. Her head may be quieter than Sherlock’s, but it’s still rather hectic, even during the hour and fifteen minutes she has allotted this week for her own self-care.

Among other things, Joan is now wondering when anybody last called her  _Doctor_. She misses that so terribly, sometimes, the guilty thrill of it, back in the days when her name was shorthand for a call to action, for an opportunity to be a hero. She’s pretty sure she could get Sherlock to introduce her as “Dr. Watson”  on cases – in fact, she suspects he would love nothing more, with the strange pride he seems to take in her former career. Sherlock, in fact, may be the only person in her life who has never pitied or judged her for losing the job she loved, who simply accepted this small measure of irredeemable loss as part of who she was. He himself was no stranger to loss, after all. She could still thank him for that, even though it’s probably long overdue.  

“Joan?”

“ _My mind rebels at stagnation_ ,” Joan intones by way of an answer, without really intending to do so, and gives a brief embarrassed shake of the head at the confusion in Genevieve’s face. “Something my best friend says. I’m sorry. Again.”

Genevieve raises an eyebrow and begins to jot something down on her little leather-bound notebook, though unfortunately Joan can’t decipher its contents just from the bobbing motion of the top of the pen, as some claim is possible. In Joan’s experience, however, it’s a bad sign when a therapist starts writing before she’s done a lot of listening. Joan sighs. This is the second therapist she’s seen in a month and a half, and she’s already anticipating walking out of this office never to return. The first one, recommended to her by a former colleague from Stuyvesant Memorial, was a pricey counselor out of Manhattan whose cold demeanor and eerie, unfortunate resemblance to Moriarty had been enough to send Joan packing halfway through her intake interview. Genevieve Henson, right here in Brooklyn, was Emily’s suggestion, and Joan can already sense that this will be a fiasco. The woman has been, so far, both boring and a little judgmental, which makes Joan uncomfortable and unwilling to open up. Joan thinks the unease started on the first meeting, when the therapist had looked her over with a faint, yet unmistakable air of superiority, and declared, _ _“Seems like you definitely need help, Joan.”__

Joan is contemplating, with some dread, whom to turn to next for advice on mental health professionals —her mother? Ms. Hudson?— when the other woman’s voice startles her back to attention.

“So, Joan,” Genevieve resumes, and clears her throat, “tell me about your nightmares.”

Joan hesitates. Although they are the main reason she’s here, she supposes that the nightmares are incidental, a symptom of deeper issues that she needs help with: that old, familiar guilt like a stray dog that keeps following her home, and the residual terror from Sherlock’s relapse, which refuses to go away completely. But she’s not about to discuss this with a therapist she’s already decided she no longer wants to see. Just as she opens her mouth to offer some kind of excuse, to deflect, there’s a quick double knock at the door.

“Yes?” asks Genevieve, once more looking vaguely peeved. Joan can’t help but disapprove. _My bedside manner was much better than this,_ she thinks, absurdly offended on behalf of her former profession.  

The door opens a sliver and the receptionist-cum-assistant pops her head into the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but Ms. Watson’s husband’s here to pick her up.”

 Joan scrambles to her feet before she has finished fully processing the sentence, before her therapist gets a chance to stop her, eager to seize the opportunity to leave before she can make things more awkward than they already are. Genevieve looks appalled at her haste, but Joan quickly shakes the doctor’s hand and dashes out of the office and into the waiting room.

 “He said he’d wait out in the lobby,” the secretary indicates with a nod in the direction of the elevators. Joan frowns and casts a look out of the tall, curtain-less windows. She has no idea what this is all about, she is a grown woman who has just embarrassed herself in front of a mental health professional, and it is pelting down outside, and she has no umbrella. Brilliant.

 As she walks out of the elevator and across the lobby, she sees an unmistakable figure in a dark blue pea-coat standing outside on the sidewalk, pacing underneath a gigantic red umbrella. As she pushes the heavy glass door open and exits, he quickly makes his way over to her and holds the umbrella over them both, angling it so that she gets the most coverage.

 “Watson,” Sherlock greets her, with a short nod. “I gather you did not like Ms. Henson.”

 Joan rolls her eyes. Someday she’ll get him to stop deducing things she was going to tell him eventually. “What are you doing out here?”

 “There was a fellow addict up in the waiting room,” he explains, completely misreading her question. “The short white woman with the green vest and her hair dyed blonde. She was—”

 “I know. I saw her playing with a sobriety chip. What about her?”

 Sherlock bounces on the balls of his feet and lets his head loll to the side momentarily before answering, “She appeared to have relapsed very recently. I smelled faint traces of vodka—”

 “She was in withdrawal and it made you uncomfortable,” Joan completes. “Okay. But why are you waiting out here?”

 “Why remain inside and risk that dreadful therapist attempting to ambush you while you await a Zooss?”

 “I’m not taking a Zooss.” Joan arches her eyebrows. “Plus, what made you think I wanted to leave here as fast as possible?” She watches patiently as Sherlock gives a little shrug and gently steers her nearer the curb so that they won’t be in the way of a small cluster of tourists walking past. “Sherlock?”

 Sherlock averts his gaze and turns his head away, body language telegraphing his discomfort loud and clear. But since they’re standing close under the red umbrella on a relatively crowded sidewalk while the rain keeps pouring around them, there’s nowhere he can go. “Yes, Watson,” he says, eventually.

 Joan resists the urge to roll her eyes. Judging from the way he delivers such prosaic little sentences, they’ve been married thirty years and live together in a charming little cottage upstate. It’s no wonder everyone makes the same assumption. “Why did you come here? I didn’t ask you to pick me up.”

 “You forgot to bring an umbrella,” he informs her unnecessarily.

 “ _Sherlock_.”

 He rolls his shoulders back and lets out a breath through his nose, irked as always when pressed to confess to something. “I anticipated that you might not find Ms. Henson appropriate,” he offers, which is still not an answer but it’s interesting enough that Joan takes the bait.

 “How?”

 He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, looking increasingly awkward. The rain has only eased off slightly, and the shoulders of his coat are beginning to darken, spattered with the heavy raindrops he’s shielding her from. “With all due respect, Watson, you often take issue with your friend Emily’s suggestions, so I had reason to believe she might be wrong about this as well.”

 Joan’s jaw drops slightly. “Is this about her calling you a gumshoe when I first started working with you?”

 “Watson, I would __never__ —”

 Sherlock looks so aggrieved Joan has to laugh, the sound of it cutting him off mid-sentence before he can finish defending his honor. She feels a little better, she realizes, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders by some gentle deity who said, _It’s alright, kid, I’ll take it from here._ “Okay,” she says, to settle the matter, hands spread out in front of her in a placating gesture. “Let’s call a cab and get out of here.”

 “Actually,” he ventures, shuffling on the spot again, “wouldn’t you prefer to take the tube? It’s been a while since we have carried out any live detection out on the field, so to speak.”

 “So, basically, you wanna sit in a subway car judging people,” she says, and he gives a little nod to the side, conceding her point.  

 “One must constantly train oneself to be the best observer one can be,” he says primly.

 Joan sighs. “Fine. Let’s get going already.”

 “Excellent, Watson.” Sherlock shifts the umbrella to his other hand and Joan loops her arm through his and together they set off down the block toward the nearest subway stop. Then he adds, quietly, “I’m sorry she disappointed you.” He waits, watching her expectantly for a moment, and when she shrugs, he goes on: “But don’t despair. This is New York. You’ll find a suitable therapist soon enough.”

 Joan gives a minute smile at his attempt at reassurance. “Sure. If not, I can always talk to the bees.”

 

———

 

 A few weeks after they get their jobs back, while investigating the Abby Campbell murder, Sherlock notices that Watson is in a dark mood. His suspicions are confirmed that night while discussing the day’s casework.  Watson notifies him curtly that a cop from Coney Island —of all places— has been sniffing around in her life without directly accusing her of anything. She explains that she's spent the entire day trying to talk to this woman —a Detective Cortes— to find out how it is that she’s offended her. Sherlock agrees that the timing of Cortes’s enquiries couldn’t be more unfortunate, and Watson promises to handle it, and then their conversation gets interrupted by a call pertaining to the case at hand, and he forgets all about it. The next day they spend quite a while interrogating suspects and digging through medical waste and patient records, so by the time they solve the case and Watson heads off, presumably to entreat with Detective Cortes once more, he thinks nothing of it.

 But then Watson comes back that night with an incipient black eye, a split lip, and torn knuckles, and suddenly Sherlock is paying attention.

 "You should see the other girl," she jokes grimly when she comes in and he freezes in alarm. "You didn't see my text?" 

 Numbly he pulls his phone from his pocket to find  a text from her that reads, _Gonna fight that Cortes woman. (Literally.) Don't freak out. Also can you have your poultice ready for when I come back?_ He looks up at her, shakes his head, at a loss, and then springs forward to take a closer look at her face. "My apologies, Watson. I was doing memory exercises and I neglected my phone. Are you alright?" 

 She looks weary, but she waves off his concern while he watches her closely. "Just dandy. At least I won."

 He narrows his eyes at her, quite unhappy with her decision to fight —even though, he realizes belatedly, he was the one to bring up the whole "cops settle their so-called beefs with fist fights" idea in the first place—, and then he nods in the direction of the kitchen to indicate he will wait for her there. What’s done is done: now it’s his turn to play doctor.

 ———

 

Joan trudges up the stairs to her room, exhausted. As she closes the door, she contemplates curling up on the bed for a while, but it’s getting late, and she’d better treat her injuries before she goes to sleep or they will look worse tomorrow.  She wore the wrong clothes, she notes, though of course she hadn’t been expecting to fight Cortes right there and then. Her short patterned skirt, tight on her upper thighs, had made it tricky to move as fast as she wanted to, and her delicate white shirt with the bib collar was ruined now, stained with her blood and sweat as well as Cortes’s. She really should have thought the whole thing through.  Clearly, she needs to get a good therapist as soon as possible — she’s reverting to some very immature conflict resolution strategies. She pushes back the thought of the perversely satisfying thud she heard when her fist finally connected with Cortes’s jaw, something she really shouldn’t feel proud of. She’s supposed to be the diplomatic, rational one, after all. But something in her, some strange, adolescent belligerence, bristles at her dutifulness, at her wish for normalcy. Still, as she runs a comb through her hair and braids it, she tells herself to ignore it. She takes an Advil and tells herself: _You will do better tomorrow._

 Slowly, she changes into a T-shirt and shorts and wraps herself in her red cardigan, occasionally wincing at the pain in her limbs but especially in her right elbow and shoulder (Cortes hadn't really given her a chance to warm up, or a single moment's respite.) When she starts down the stairs, she hears Sherlock rummaging frantically in the kitchen cupboards for the ingredients to make the poultice. It makes her feel a little better to know that she can count on him to take care of her, now. It always makes her feel a surge of tenderness, how much of a mother hen he can be sometimes, and it’s a nice change from always being the mom friend herself.  Earlier that day, when she had told him about Cortes, he hadn’t seemed very worried, and Joan had wondered whether he was a little too overconfident in his father's ability to keep them both employed, or if he was just distracted by the lurid details of the Abby Campbell investigation. In any case, Joan figures, now she’s gone and given him ample reason to be worried, which… definitely wasn’t the intended outcome. Great.

 When she gets to the kitchen level a few moments later, he’s already waiting for her, bouncing impatiently on the balls of his feet, and he goes as far as pulling out a chair for her at the head of the table. She rolls her eyes, sits, and explains what happened before he has a chance to either freak out any further or lecture her on her self-defense training. When he questions her about “why she felt compelled to resolve the matter in such an urgent, impulsive manner,” she doesn't waste any time trying to justify what she did. "Look. She was basically bullying me. I flipped, okay? It wasn't my finest moment." 

 "I'm not judging your reaction, Watson," he counters quietly, spreading a dollop of  poultice on a strip of gauze with a spoon and folding the cloth into a square. "I am merely pointing out how uncharacteristic it is." 

 It's an invitation to elaborate, and for a moment she considers declining, keeping her concerns to herself so he can focus on getting better. (So what if a tiny part of her is counting the days to his next sobriety chip? He's doing the work; the last thing he needs is further distraction.) But she is always telling _him_  to open up, and he only very recently came to see them as a team, and there shouldn’t be dishonesty between them anymore, so she goes for it. "Your father," she says, inarticulately starting  _in media res_. Sherlock only blinks at her, politely baffled. "I told you, I think Cortes could find out your father got us back into the NYPD. She as much as threatened to look into it herself." 

 He raises a skeptical eyebrow. "That's hardly likely. She must have been bluffing." 

 "Not necessarily," she argues. “And even if she doesn't look into it, and she badmouths us to someone who might want us out,  _ _they__  might find out. I just wanted to settle this with her and move on." 

 He grimaces. “You regret being indebted to my father for our jobs." 

  _Yes,_ she'd like to say, _big time_. Because now they more or less owe their careers to Morland Holmes: no matter how flawlessly they may perform, how spotless and successful their record from now on, his intervention will always loom like a big black cloud above them. One misstep, and they could be out of a job again. Their work will be discredited, tainted by the knowledge of Sherlock's connections and wealth. But this fear she keeps to herself. "It's not about that," she deflects. "He can only do so much. If they kick us out again, that’s two strikes, Sherlock. One more and we're out." 

 He scowls at her choice of words, as unimpressed as ever by baseball in general and by its contributions to contemporary American slang in particular. "So you wished to make sure Cortes didn't continue her inquiries, to eliminate that risk." 

 She hums her assent.

 "And you didn't think of your public brawl today as a potential stain on your, thus far, impeccable reputation?" 

 She clicks her tongue. "It wasn't a brawl. And my reputation's not impeccable." 

 "If considered independently, it is," he points out, sheepish. 

 She rolls her eyes. "There is no  _independently_ here, Sherlock. We're partners."   

 "Nonetheless, did you not stop to consider—" 

 "No, I didn't _stop to consider_ anything," she echoes, realizing belatedly that it comes out a little snappy. "I just wanted to punch my way through the problem. It was stupid, I know." She purses her lips. "I'm sorry. Now everybody's gonna think we're a couple of thugs." 

 He shakes his head. "Don't despair, Watson. I may occasionally be perceived as an unhinged addict,” he notes amiably, pointing at himself with a lazy flick of the wrist, “but you are generally well-liked, an excellent investigator, and usually conduct yourself with the utmost grace and propriety." 

 She snorts and makes a point of pulling her hand out of the ice bowl and wiggling her fingers to show him her reddened knuckles. "Yeah. Sure. Joan  _Ladylike_ Watson, that's me." She flexes her fingers, grimaces and shoves them back in the bowl. "Are you gonna give me that or what," she adds, nodding in the general direction of the poultice. 

 Sherlock follows her gaze in confusion, then gives a little shake of the head as if berating himself for his absent-mindedness, picks up the piece of gauze covered in poultice and presses it gingerly to the side of her face. She leans in a little closer and lifts her left hand as if to take over, but he instructs her to keep both hands in the ice bowl, so she desists. As her wet fingers brush against the back of his hand on their way back down, a drop of water runs down his wrist and the hair on his arm stands on end. There is something electric and warm about the moment, yet whatever it is, as usual, remains unspoken. 

 "Did you engage in any fist fighting as a child, Watson?" 

 Sherlock's hand and the piece of gauze obscure most of the left side of her face. From what she can see peeking between his fingers, and out of her right eye, the expression on his face seems wistful. She frowns, and feels his fingers twitch in reaction to the muscle jumping in her forehead. "Of course not. My mother would've freaked." 

 "Yet you seem possessed of the confidence and weariness of a seasoned fighter.” 

 That makes her laugh long and loud, the ache in her arm and face momentarily forgotten. "You make me sound like Wonder Woman." Predictably, the reference falls flat with him, and she elaborates, “Let’s just say I've been in a couple of fights. I had a couple of... tough years, I guess you could call them." 

 "As an adolescent?" 

 She nods, and Sherlock's hand on the side of her face follows her movement. "It was, um..." She wiggles her fingers in the ice bowl idly, trying to remember. "Last two years of high school, I think. I quieted  down after that. Pre-med was too absorbing.” She lets her head loll to the side for a moment and exhales, pensive. “Besides, being on edge all the time, looking for trouble, that’s not healthy." 

 Sherlock has leaned forward and he’s listening intently. "May I presume it was Oren who taught you the ropes?" 

 She snickers. "Oren is a charm machine and everybody loves him. He doesn't know the first thing about fighting." She shakes her head. "No. It was, uh..." She trails off, clicks her tongue and lets out a little sigh. "Mary. My first girlfriend." 

 Sherlock tilts his head and his eyes widen in surprise. "You've never spoken of this Mary before. I assume your mother didn't approve of her violent influence on you." 

 Joan shakes her head. It still hurts to think about Mary Morstan, but it's a dull ache, buried in the past with Gerald Castoro and her father and the whole assortment of ghosts she totes around wherever she goes. "That’s putting it mildly." 

 Now Sherlock’s face betrays an intense curiosity. "That sounds like an interesting story." 

 Joan tilts her head and smiles mysteriously. "For another time." The pain in her face and fingers has subsided a little, and it has got to be really late. They still have to work in the morning, no matter what Cortes may or may not think of them. As Joan gently removes Sherlock's hand from her face, goosebumps erupt on his arm, but she makes no comment, and instead picks up another piece of gauze to wipe the remaining streaks of poultice off of her face. Then she pushes herself up off the chair. “Now I'm going to bed.”

 "Wait." Sherlock stands up as well and drums his fingers on the table. "Shall I do anything about—" 

 "No. Let me handle it," she cuts him off, firm. If, for whatever bullshit reason, she's to blame for Cortes’s unwelcome attention, she’s definitely going to be the one to end it. She sighs. "You know what gets me? Cortes is just annoying. But what if she gets other people to mistrust us and it spreads in the precinct?  I just feel like we're on thin ice here."  

 "I'm sorry, Watson," Sherlock says sincerely, and she accepts it — she doesn’t want him carrying any more guilt than he already is. Morland’s intervention may have been a necessary evil after Sherlock’s relapse, but Sherlock’s not to blame for the general feeling of animosity consultants tend to elicit in police officers, nor for Cortes’s interference in particular. No one is to blame for these elements of chaos thrown into the careful order of their world.  "If it's any consolation, I'm fairly sure you could make an extra income as a personal trainer." 

 She dips her head with a shy smile and flinches again when the movement makes her right shoulder ache. "Let’s hope I don’t have to." Then she looks up at him. "Thanks for your help with this," she adds, pointing vaguely to her face. 

 Sherlock gives her a curt nod, avoiding her gaze. "You're most welcome, Watson.  Though I believe you allowed Cortes to land far too many punches." 

 Joan rolls her eyes and tilts her head at him, because he is missing the point: that letting Cortes beat her up —within limits— was the goal all along, regardless of who won. Joan figured the more satisfying the fight was for Cortes, the likelier she’d be to back off afterwards. The fight was, Joan reasoned, the lesser of two evils, and anyway, she was capable of giving as good as she got. (It’s like a line from that funny poem Kitty showed her once: _He had lost, but in a romantic way, which meant that he had won _.__ ) Joan sees the exact moment her train of thought dawns on Sherlock’s face.

 “ _Oh _.__ ”

 "Yeah, exactly." she replies, and as he stands rooted to the spot, still nodding and frowning, Joan waves a feeble goodbye over her shoulder and heads upstairs to bed. That night she dreams of Mary Morstan for the first time in decades.

 In the dream, Mary is familiar and unknown, seventeen, or maybe twenty-one, impossibly charming and beautiful. For some reason, they are standing in a street corner in Jackson Heights, and Mary is teaching Joan to fight. It’s a dizzying summer day and Joan feels like she’s watching the scenery around her in an old home video rather than with her own eyes — there’s a blurry, artificially filtered quality to the shapes and colors. There are children nearby playing ball and skipping rope on the sidewalks and in alleyways, and grown-ups running errands and getting lunch, but no one pays them any attention. The street they’re on —with its collection of old brick storefronts and colorful awnings, dollar stores, and pocket-sized delis and cafés— looks frustratingly recognizable, but Joan can’t decide if she’s been here or not.

 Then Mary throws a punch and Joan barely manages to dodge it reflexively. “Yo, focus, you big nerd,” Mary taunts her, in her sultry, commanding voice. (Joan remembers falling in love with that voice and wondering, at times, if Mary had always sounded like that, even as the scrappy, boisterous child who mythically terrorized young bullies in certain corners of Queens in the very late seventies and early eighties.) Joan puts up her fists and fights, and every time she lands a punch Mary only says, _Again,_ and Joan fights until she drops.

 

———

 

The next morning, over breakfast, Watson announces that she’s taking the day off. She still feels drained from the fight, she claims, and, uncharacteristically, Sherlock decides to leave her be. Later that morning, she pops her head around the doorway to the media room, dressed to go out, and announces she’s taking her nephews to Coney Island. (She’d promised to see them more often, she explains when she notices his perplexity; she’d missed last Halloween, so she wanted to make it up to them.)

 He frowns, eyeing her suspiciously. “Is this an attempt to survey Detective Cortes?”

 She gives him a mildly scowling look. “Of course not. I haven’t been there in ages and it’ll be fun for the kids. You wanna come?”

 He blinks at her, amused, not quite sure whether she isn’t joking. “I appreciate the invitation, but one of us should hold down the fort, wouldn’t you agree?”

 Watson narrows her eyes at him, stifling a smirk, and lifts her chin a little in that way she has sometimes when the wheels are turning in her brain. “You’re afraid of rollercoasters, aren’t you.”

 He gapes at her, then purses his mouth, outraged that she has read his mind. “Distaste and fear are very different things,” he attempts.

 “Oh my _God _.__ ” Watson covers her face with her hands and laughs hard for the first time in weeks, and Sherlock wishes he could make that happen more often. “I am so making you ride the Cyclone next summer.”

 “That won’t be necessary.”

 “Sherlock, you live in _New York_ ,” she asserts enthusiastically, as if that settles it. “You sure you don’t wanna come along today?”

 He sits back on the armchair, crosses one leg over the other and stares at her with his eyebrows raised in mock exasperation. “Okay, your loss,” Watson says breezily, and waves goodbye over her shoulder. When she comes back that afternoon, she looks both flustered and more cheerful than she has in a long time, and he almost wishes he had taken her up on her offer. “Jesus,” she huffs out, the second she comes in, as she slumps against the door, “it’s so _cold_  out there. Do you _know_  how cold it is out there?”

 He arches an eyebrow at her, amused. “Yes, Watson, I am aware. It’s autumn, and I’m not a robot.”

She groans some more as she takes off her gloves. "I so should have done this earlier in the year.”

 She’s unbuttoning her coat, and as he approaches, she turns and he helps her out of it and hangs it on the peg. (He tries not to dwell on how unthinkingly she waited for him, on the slow breath she drew in when he brushed her hair away from the collar of her shirt. Watson and touch: black holes, unknowability, conundrums. Best left unexamined.) As she turns and unwraps the scarf from around her neck, his nostrils fill with her scent: the perfume she’d sprayed on before she left —violets and cherry blossoms, sweet in a humble, unassuming way, and thus fitting— and a faint though distinctive smell of caramel or burnt sugar, probably from standing and walking in the general vicinity of street vendors making cotton candy and toffee apples. It suddenly occurs to him that he hasn’t moved, and while Watson seems unbothered, he takes a step back, for propriety’s sake. (Also, Watson, up close, is often overwhelming, for reasons he can’t quite bring himself to delve into.)

 “Please tell me you have tea ready.”

 “Better yet, Watson. I anticipated you might be cold upon your return, so I lit the fire in the parlor,” he announces, gesturing to the room to their left. “I’ll bring you hot chocolate in a minute if you’ll take a seat.”

 She closes her eyes and hums with pleasure and anticipation. “Ahhh, _thank you_ ,” she says, pressing a hand flat to her collarbone in a rare mannerism reminiscent of a lady clutching at her pearls, minus the pearls, and then walking past him to the parlor.

 Later, after she’s warmed up, while she’s helping him make dinner, she tells him all about her day with her nephews, and he recounts his work that day for a private client, which mostly consisted of pursuing a seemingly exciting report of Big Foot sightings at museums and art galleries around the city, only to find out they were a hoax originally designed by a group of acting students from the Academy of Dramatic Arts as a moving “performance piece” —Watson rolled her eyes at his evident contempt— which had then been, to their dismay, used as a distraction to commit burglaries in said institutions. All in all, a fairly uneventful day’s work, he concludes, and Watson snorts and says she will keep that in mind next time she decides to take a day off. “Agh, Big Foot,” she says suddenly, tapping her forehead softly. “I almost forgot. Be right back.”

 She heads upstairs to the foyer and after a moment, she returns with something hidden behind her back and a mischievous-yet-apologetic little smile on her face. He raises his eyebrows expectantly, and she shows him a small stuffed animal that appears to be a strange cross between dragon and bat, with a large human face, crazy eyes and small purple wings. “I won you this,” she explains, as she offers it up. “I know it’s not Big Foot, but…” She smooths her other hand down the front of her leggings nervously. “I’m not sure what it is, actually. Some kind of bat with a human face. The face reminded me of Angus.”

 Sherlock blinks at her in utter perplexity and takes the stuffed bat from her hands. “You won me this,” he repeats, not really sure what is happening.

 Watson seems to take his surprise as a rebuff, because she deflates a little, which immediately makes him feel like a terrible person. She walks past him to the counter so she can finish chopping the lettuce for her salad. “Yeah. We played a bunch of games until I won some other stuff for Jordan and Lee and then this T-shirt for me and I just thought, why not bring one of these bad boys home, right?”

 He looks repeatedly from the toy in his hands to her back, tense with defensiveness. “Watson, I am amazed by your prowess at these games you speak of. I had previously assumed they were all rigged against the customers.”

 Watson looks back at him over her shoulder and gives a conspiratorial little grin. “I actually noticed a couple of them were. So I kind of… blackmailed the owners into giving me another chance to win the toys?”

 “ _Watson _.__ ” She is a marvel. It’s hard to keep a poker face at times like these.  “While I can’t say I have a particular appreciation for stuffed animals,  I applaud your determination and ingenuity.” He walks over and makes himself look briefly at her profile. “Thank you.”

 She stops chopping for a moment to meet his gaze. “You’re welcome.” Then she looks down to the counter once more, sets the knife aside, picks up the lettuce slices and dumps them into the salad bowl. “Just don’t let Clyde lick it or anything. We don’t know where it’s been.”

 He shakes his head as he crosses the room, intending to go upstairs. But he stops at the doorway and spins back to ask, “The shelf above the fireplace would be a good spot, wouldn’t it? It’s out of Clyde’s reach, and it can have pride of place next to the original Angus.”

 “I like that idea.” She nods as she carries the salad bowl and the cutlery to the table. “And we could even convince Ms. Hudson that it counts as Halloween decoration for next year.”

 “Hmm, yes, I’m sure she’ll be quite impressed,” he deadpans, and Watson smirks.

 “She can at least appreciate the effort right? Also, dinner’s ready.”

 He turns from the doorway and steps back into the kitchen. “We shall have to name him,” he muses out loud, as he sets the stuffed animal on the table so he can pull out a chair for Watson.

 She sweeps her hair over one shoulder, bows her her head slightly in acknowledgment of his gesture, and sits. “Angus II?”

 He sits down as well and makes a face at her to convey his disapproval. “Surely we can come up with something more original.”

 “Oh, I already came up with like three different Batman-related names, but you won’t like that.”

 He frowns. “That’s a safe assumption.”

 “Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “So what would you name him?”

 “I was thinking of Vesper.”

 “Like the Bond girl in _Casino Royale_?”

 His frown deepens. He has never had anything but contempt for the Ian Fleming franchise —and for the inevitable James Bond jokes he’s put up with over the years on account of his accent, his style of dress, and his involvement with law enforcement—, but that’s beside the point.  “As in the Latin word for _evening_ , Watson. As you know, bats are nocturnal animals—”

 “So, in other words, you’re proposing another Batman _ _-__ related name, but it’s less obvious.” He sets down the fork and tilts his head at her in complete confusion. “ _I am the night,_ ” she intones in a deep, mock-somber voice, eyes widening in that way she has sometimes when she’s explaining something, but to no avail. He shakes his head, helpless, and Watson laughs. “Really?”

 “How can you possibly turn everything into a Batman reference?”

 “I’ll make you a reading list,” she reassures him, with a wink from across the table. “Anyway, that name’s boring. What else you got?”

 He shifts uncomfortably in his chair as he munches on a mouthful of shepherd’s pie and ponders several other possibilities, all equally unfit. He has a sudden memory of being twenty-five and grudgingly allowing Alistair to drag him along to a _Nosferatu_ retrospective. It may have been an attempt on Alistair's part to keep him occupied for a while so he wouldn’t go off looking for drugs or walk up and down the streets of London all night long. Of course, he realizes belatedly, years too late, that Alistair was trying to take care of him even then, in his own way. If Sherlock had let him, maybe his late twenties wouldn’t have been so miserable.

 Sherlock realizes he’s chewing with his mouth open and Watson is watching him with some concern, attuned as always to his state of mind. He swallows around a nauseating wave of nostalgia for Alistair and returns to the memory of that _Nosferatu_  retrospective. They had gone to a pub afterwards, where Alistair had bought him dinner and expertly expounded upon the reasons why Max Shreck’s portrayal of Count Dracula was undoubtedly the best. Sherlock was no film buff, but he had enjoyed that day, and so had allowed it to originate a tradition of sorts — broken off later on, naturally, by Sherlock’s own descent into drug-fueled mania. Every once in a while, Alistair would drop by Baker Street and drag him to the movies, until eventually they had seen every Dracula film ever made. Afterwards, once more Alistair would dissect the nuances —or lack thereof— of every performance and Sherlock would just listen, strangely enrapt and secretly grateful for the rare, small mercies these outings afforded him: the warmth of the room in a harsh winter day, a full belly, the soft buzz from a few pints and Alistair's company.

 Sherlock sets down his fork and says, “I believe we should name him Count Orlok.”

 Watson’s eyebrows furrow slightly. “Never took you for a _Nosferatu_ fan.”

 Sherlock finds that he wants to smile even though every memory of his friend makes him feel profoundly sad, abandoned even. It is incongruous. His lips half purse, half curl. He doesn’t look up from his rapidly cooling pie. “Alistair was.” He hears Watson sigh.

 “Alright,” she agrees amiably. “But that’s his full title. We’re friends, can’t we just call him Max, for short? Like, the actor’s name was Max, right?”

 Sherlock knows that Watson already knows the answer to that question. He looks up at her and finds in her eyes none of the pity he feared, only the empathy of someone who understands guilt and mourning all too well, which is bittersweet, to say the least. He breathes out, holds her gaze and tries his hand at a reassuring smile, hoping it doesn’t come out a frightening grimace. “That’s acceptable.”

 Watson raises her glass in a solemn toast. “To friends old and new.”

 Sherlock, with a knot in his throat, only mirrors her and nods.

 “Pie any good?” she asks after a moment.

 Sherlock welcomes the distraction. “Very. We might just make a good cook of you yet, Watson.”

 She narrows her eyes at him, then gives up the pretense of indignation and laughs quietly, napkin pressed to her mouth. “Wow. You say the nicest things, you know.”

 “I meant no offense. You are a woman of many talents.”

 “Yeah, right. But cooking isn't one of them, is it.” She shakes her head. “You know, if you don’t actually like the pie, you can just say so. It’s fine. I’ll buy you some take-out.”

 “The pie’s _fine,_ Watson.”

 Clearly unconvinced, she raises her eyebrows, tilts her head and chews enthusiastically. After a moment, she swallows, wipes her mouth with the napkin and twists her mouth to the side, half contrite, half pensive. “I could go,” she offers, leaning forward, intent and gentle. “You look like you need a moment alone.”

 Sherlock shakes his head once, then waves a nervous hand in a circle that encompasses Count Orlok, what remains of  the shepherd’s pie in its red enamel platter and Watson herself and says, “I have everything I need right here.”

 

  ———

 

 

Weeks later, when Cortes comes back around, still as suspicious as ever and possibly trying to frame her for assault, Joan realizes that whether she likes it or not, and despite her best intentions, she has an official enemy — which is in fact not as exciting or glamorous as her favorite superhero stories would have her believe.  _Comic books have tricked me? Holy plot twist, Batman!_  she tells herself wryly, because Sherlock clearly wouldn't appreciate that joke, or would believe she's trivializing her situation. But she starts losing sleep. There seems to be a hell of a lot spinning out of her control this year. And straight-up becoming a superhero is, unfortunately, way beyond her grasp. 

 After once more confronting Cortes —who, as it turns out, wanted to enlist her in some sort of illegal crusade—, Joan bristles at the cop’s delusion of perceptiveness, as if she knew anything about who she and Sherlock are, or how they operate, at her assumption that they are at best a nuisance –taking credit from real cops— and at worst corrupt thugs making the force look bad. No matter how well she knows that isn’t the case, Cortes’s words nag at Joan all day. Her boundaries are certainly looking a lot blurrier than they should, lately. She thinks, belatedly, that she maybe should have attempted a serious conversation with Cortes, rather than simply dismissing her in such a defensive way; for starters, she could have explained exactly how they’d come to be entangled with Oscar Rankin in the first place. But Cortes said she had read the report on the incident, and still she’d chosen to overestimate and misunderstand Sherlock’s reasons for attacking Oscar, reading it as a sign that he was some sort of potential vigilante, and Joan too for her acceptance of what happened. Or she could have disabused Cortes of the notion that they’re getting special treatment by reminding her of the three-weeks’ long suspension they endured as a consequence of Sherlock’s actions. But that might have done more harm than good: Cortes is a good cop, and Joan doesn’t want her looking into the circumstances of their reinstatement to the force — so Morland’s invisible hand in the matter won’t be revealed.

 One night she has a nightmare where she is being tried, though no one will tell her what she’s being charged with until she’s brought into the courtroom in handcuffs, and sees Janet, Nicole, and Nyoka, the three victims she had encountered that week, sitting in the jurors’ chairs. When she looks up, Gina Cortes, in judge’s garb, is reading her charges, which are identical to the crimes committed against the three women. She tries to protest that she didn’t do any of that, but Cortes silences her. “You didn’t make the bad guys pay, Joanie. You might as well have hurt these girls yourself. You should’ve done more,” she says, sweetly matter-of-fact, and the victims echo her in an eerie Greek chorus:  _ _Do more, Joanie. Do more!__  When she wakes up, Joan is almost surprised to be at the brownstone rather than in lock-up at the precinct.  The whole Cortes thing is affecting her more than it should, maybe because she’s too smart not to see the detective’s logic, especially after the case they just had. She thinks about what she would do if she could time-travel back to last year, to the moment she realized Elana March was behind Andrew’s death, or when Del Gruner threatened her knowing full well she and Sherlock were going to prove that he was behind Kitty’s as well as the abduction and torture of so many young girls. She wonders if she would have acted differently, if she really has it in her to take justice into her own hands. Three or four years ago, before this job, her answer would have been a resounding negative, but now? She doesn’t even know. That unsettling uncertainty is something she has no idea what to do with.  

 (And maybe she is fundamentally just lying to herself, she thinks. Maybe she has always been this way.  A decade ago, already, she was once standing over a dying patient and pondering whether to prioritize justice over duty.)

 

———

 

Winter comes eventually, of course, and Watson reminds him that although he’s not having a birthday celebration –she has suggested an informal meet-up with Gregson and Marcus after work, or a dinner at the brownstone with Alfredo, Ms. Hudson and her mother, but he politely declined both offers—, he should definitely call Kitty, and he agrees. But then about a week before his birthday they get sucked into a pressing federal manhunt case –which he’s proud to say they solve— and he forgets entirely. 

 So on the morning of his birthday Watson drags him away from the rooftop —where he’s conducting an experiment with miniature, remote-detonated bombs and the black powder he makes himself— and down to the studio and presents him with breakfast and his open computer, where Kitty beckons from a Skype window. She is in a well-lit, spacious kitchen that doesn’t seem to be the one from her old apartment in London, and there’s little ambient noise — perhaps a countryhouse? He itches to ask where she’s staying, but doesn’t. It’s safer if he doesn’t know.

 “There you are, old geezer,” Kitty says, by way of greeting, and there is so much fondness in it his heart grows two sizes. He raises his eyebrows at Watson, who says nothing, a pleased little smile on her face, and gestures in the direction of the swivel  chair. He takes a seat and she leans against the doorframe.  

 “Hello there, lassie,” he replies, playing along. “To what do I owe the pleasure?” 

 “You forgot to call me so I called you.” 

 He hums and frowns, embarrassed that it’s slipped his mind. “I’m sorry. What can I do for you?” 

 Kitty’s eyes widen –which, with her typically heavy dark eye-shadow, makes her look a tad loony— and her mouth curls in a lopsided little grin. “You do remember it’s your birthday, right?” 

 “Oh,” he says, a monosyllabic admission, and Watson snorts and hands him a small parcel wrapped in a chipper bee-patterned pastel green wrapping paper.  

 “That’s from me,” Kitty chirps from the screen, before he can voice how ridiculous the whole situation is. Inside the package is a vibrant red T-shirt that reads  _ _Bee Yourself__  in a flowing, stylized white typography. For a moment he is actually speechless, awash with a puzzling feeling he’s slow to recognize as happiness, so he looks from Watson to Kitty and back again a couple of times, hoping to ascertain what exactly is supposed to be happening. Watson and Kitty roll their eyes in near unison, which is —tangentially— adorable.  

 “You’re familiar with the concepts of birthday presents,” Watson deadpans.     

 “Of course, of course,” he says, dumbfounded but trying to shake it off. It has been so long since he has celebrated his birthday or even spent one not feeling entirely alone and miserable that he has nearly forgotten its rituals.

 Surely, there had to have been at least a couple of good ones over the years, right? He remembers a winter night —it may not have been his birthday strictly speaking, but thereabouts— when Alistair had dragged him to a pub from which they had eventually been thrown out on account of their loud, drunken attempt to see who could recite the densest Shakespearean monologues from memory in the most ridiculous accent possible. (Sherlock had ventured a millennial valley girl _Hamlet_ impression, but had been unequivocally bested by Alistair’s flawless grunge-infused Kiwi _Macbeth _.__ )But overall his birthdays had been so bad that he eventually convinced himself they were just another instance of the many social conventions he had no use for.

 It occurs to him, incidentally, that this is the first time since he knows Watson that she’s actually done something about his birthday: this time last year he was struggling with sobriety and she was considering changing employers; the winter prior to that had been marked by Moriarty's reappearance with the Kayden Fuller case, and by his guilt over getting Marcus shot; and before that, she must have felt it too soon in their acquaintance to bring up the subject, especially considering how protective of his privacy he was at the beginning, how assiduously they each drew and redrew lines in the sand, in their own ways. So this is the first time, and there’s one for everything, he supposes.

 “This is… quite amusing,” he concedes.  “Thank you.”  

 “It’s the coolest T-shirt you’ve ever owned, admit it,” Kitty prompts proudly.  

 Watson laughs and he manages not to frown. “I wouldn’t go as far as—”

 “Happy birthday, old man,” Kitty interrupts softly, not quite meeting his gaze. Her mouth contorts into a smug little smile. “How many is it now, about a thousand and one?”    

 Watson arches an eyebrow. “Watch it, young lady.” 

 “That’s alright,” Sherlock cuts in amiably. “Though I am not at liberty to discuss my age with strangers on the Internet, so it will have to remain a mystery.” 

Kitty sniggers. “Well, I’ve got news for you, mate. I happen to be a detective.” 

He shakes his head, mock-dismissive. “I’m not worried.” 

“What is that supposed to mean—” Kitty starts, pretending to be quite outraged, when Watson softly puts a hand on Sherlock's shoulder, distracting his attention from the screen, and frankly, everything else in the five boroughs.  

“Your breakfast’s going cold,” she points out. “Happy birthday, by the way.” 

“Yeah, we already established that, Watson, keep up, will you?” Kitty intrudes, overacting her exasperation. She opens her mouth to say more, but Watson glares at her in a way that is both sweet and intimidating, somehow, and Kitty zips it, holding back laughter.  

“I’ll leave you to it,” Watson says, removing her hand from his shoulder and heading off. He stares after her for a moment and then turns back to Kitty, grabs his teacup and raises it in a silent toast, which she mirrors with her own, the gesture traveling across land and sea so that Kitty is, for a moment, home, even if she isn’t. ( _Schrodinger’s Kitty,_ Sherlock thinks, cringing at the fact that he’s allowed himself to make a pun, but no matter. He shall tell Watson the joke later.)

 

———

 

When he finds Watson later she raises her eyebrows at the fact that he’s changed into Kitty’s birthday T-shirt, and he explains that Kitty had wanted him to make sure it was the right size, because this was the second time she’d had to guess in order to make him a present and she now wanted to have all the information needed to begin “a proper fun T-shirt tradition.” Watson, of course, lights up at this, endorses the idea wholeheartedly, and at once sends Kitty a text informing her of her willingness to cooperate with her endeavor.

 Watson seems inordinately cheerful today and it takes him a while to realize that it’s because he is relatively cheerful himself. The potential correlation of her happiness to his is a subject that fills him with no small amount of trepidation, so he prefers not to dwell on it.

 It’s nearly dinnertime but he doesn’t think she’s eaten already, as she has been reviewing case files and reports in the computer room for quite some time.  When he offers to cook dinner she declines, claiming she’s still full from the heavy lunch she had with her friend Emily earlier today, but she decides to move back to the parlor to be more comfortable. So after having an omelet in lieu of dinner, Sherlock makes Watson some tea and brings it to her on a tray with some biscuits in case she gets hungry later. She’s on the sofa with her legs folded to the side and she smiles when he comes in and the sight of her fills him with a warmth he cannot name or justify. He sits on the floor with his back against the sofa and has a sudden wish that she would run her fingers through his hair. He  does not know how to ask for it.

 Then, like she’s read his mind, Watson brushes tentative fingertips to the top of his head. “Can I—” 

 “Yes,” he blurts out rather awkwardly, but she doesn’t seem to mind; she threads her fingers through his hair and rubs her thumb on his scalp in comforting circles. Her touch is firm but gentle and it stills him completely. His pulse goes embarrassingly loud in his ears and then it slows down as he relaxes. For a while, then, they remain in companionable silence punctuated softly by their breaths, by the protests of the old sofa whenever Watson shifts in position, and by the rustle of paper when she turns a page. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me today, Watson,” he brings himself to say, eventually, because she deserves to hear it.  

 She hums into her teacup, swallows and sets it down on the tray. “I’m glad to hear that. Sometimes it’s hard to know what you’re gonna like or not.” 

 “Truly,” he insists, with a brief look over his shoulder, “it was quite lovely. Thank you.” 

 “You’re welcome,” she mutters, though it turns into a yawn at the end. “I assumed you wouldn’t want a present, though, so I didn’t buy you anything.” She is blinking sleepily but her forehead creases with slight concern at this.  

 “Don’t worry, Watson. You assumed correctly.” 

 She yawns again, loud and insistent this time, her body demanding sleep. His fingers twitch with a mind of their own, eager to carry her to bed. He will not offer; it would be trespassing. “Alright, then,” she agrees, with a shrug. “I’m going to bed.” She gets up off the sofa, stretches, and heads for the stairs. “If you come up with a present I should have given you, let me know,” she says over her shoulder. “Next year I’m gonna have you write a wish list or something.” 

 Not five minutes later he knocks on her bedroom door and pops his head into the room. “Watson. I’ve thought of something,” he announces, somewhat excitedly, like the conversation hasn’t already ended.  

 “ _ _Sherlock__ ,” she groans into her pillow. She has just lain down, however – he can tell from the relatively orderly state of the bedclothes. By the time she wakes up, the bed usually looks like it’s been spit out by an angry tornado. “I’m not going out to buy you anything right now. And it’s too late and too cold for any weird experiments.” 

 “You don’t have to do anything, actually,” he explains, stepping into the room proper and closing the door behind himself. “That’s the beauty of it.” 

 That’s when she notices the violin in his hands. “What are you doing with that?” 

 “I would like to play for you.” He’s hoping she won’t notice how flustered and weirdly nervous he is, but she’s gaping at him, eyebrows jutting together in confusion. “You expressed a wish to give me a present,” he explains, impatient. 

 “And the present would be playing for me?” she completes, skeptical.  

 “Yes.” And an honor, he refrains from adding. He’s embarrassed himself enough for one day, he thinks.

 “But I’m gonna fall asleep on you,” she protests, with a light chuckle, as she props herself up on her elbows.

 "Nevermind that. May I?"

 She arches one eyebrow at him and gives him a once-over as if trying to decide whether he's testing her in some way. Then she lets her mouth curl slightly and waves her hand to indicate her consent. "This is by far one of the nicest weird things you’ve ever done,” she points out, as she flops onto her back.

 Instead of replying, he allows himself the luxury of looking at her, for just an instant, while she’s unaware: the pleasantly surprised and expectant expression on her face, patent even with her eyes closed, her hair spread around her head like a dark halo —which makes him think of Munch’s _Madonna_ , though of course he must remember not to let such analogies morph into idolatry—, her arms flung backward, wrists half-resting against the wall. That is all the inspiration he needs. He cranes the violin under his chin and begins a somewhat simplified rendition of Pachelbel’s _Canon in D_.

 Watson, he can’t help but notice, raises her eyebrows and quirks her mouth into a crooked grin. “That one’s for weddings,” she remarks, without opening her eyes. “Not birthdays.”

 Sherlock could laugh, really, for he doesn’t know anyone else who would argue with him about something like this — nor anyone else that he would offer to do this for. And, frankly, he wouldn’t want it any other way. He stops playing abruptly. “I didn’t realize I should be taking requests,” he deadpans.

 She covers her face with her hands, as if embarrassed. “Ugh. Sorry. Was that mean? You can keep playing that one if you want.”

 “Watson, if you don’t like it, it defeats the whole purpose, don’t you think?”

 She purses her mouth in self-reproach and opens one eye and then the other to peek at him. “It’s not that I don’t like it,” she says. “I just expected something more… __you__ , I guess.”

 Amused, he arches an eyebrow at her, shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and considers it. “Very well, then.” He starts playing Max Richter’s _Luminous_  —though he regrets missing the piano melody— and Watson’s demeanor immediately shifts: her eyes flutter shut again, and she sighs and nods against the pillow, presumably satisfied. As he plays, he sees her fight off the drowsiness, wanting to enjoy the music for as long as possible, until eventually the soft, circular lilt of the instrument lulls her to sleep. Sherlock keeps playing until he gets to the end of the piece, after which, out of habit or perhaps respect, he takes a bow. Then he makes sure she's properly tucked in, turns off her bedside lamp, and leaves the room.

 While he is putting the violin away, Sherlock decides it’s been a rather enjoyable birthday — by his standards, at least. He even considers accepting a repeat of this year’s modest celebration in future if only for the sake of playing for Watson again.

 He yawns. Maybe Watson’s sleepiness was contagious. (The idea prompts a perfectly inappropriate thought of falling asleep next to her, with his arms around her and his nose in her hair, sharing the same air and dreaming the same dreams. Sherlock closes his eyes to live in the solace of that vision for just an instant, thinking of the first few lines of _Endymion,_  and then he shakes his head, opens his eyes, and lets it go.) Most probably, the sleep deprivation of the very busy last few days is finally catching up to him. 

 He goes into his room, strips down to his undershirt and boxers, reluctantly puts sweatpants on, lies down on the futon and throws a blanket over himself, quietly half-humming Richter’s melody as he tries to unwind. When he closes his eyes, he thinks of his mother for the first time in what feels like decades. What unfolds next before his mind’s eye is, therefore, not a dream, but a long-lost memory of his eighth birthday, the last the Holmeses would spend together. In the memory, faint and indistinct in color like a faded Polaroid but nonetheless vivid and detailed in feeling, his mother kneels before him, presents him with a flat, square object poorly wrapped in glittery gift paper —a present she had clearly prepared herself, rather than asking someone in his father’s employ to do it for her—, and says, _Happy birthday, my love._ (She had always been very affectionate, he recalls now, ashamed of himself for having forgotten. And she had bequeathed him her inability to wrap gifts properly.) When he tears the paper away, he finds a shiny record, with its unmistakable smell of new vinyl. The cardboard folder reads  _Violin Concertos_. His mother claims that if he listens to it every day, he will learn to play his violin even better.

 For some reason, Sherlock can’t place Mycroft or his father in this memory. He knows they were there that day and remembers them present at the dinner they had later, but for this little moment his mother must have sought to be alone with him.

 When he thanks his mother for the present, she makes him promise to listen to it when he’s away and says she will be listening to her own copy in turn, and thus the music will bring them together even if they happen to be in different places (which he hadn’t understood at the time, of course, as he wasn’t supposed to go to boarding school for another two years.) But he promises anyway, and his mother beams a little tearfully and he lets her hug him, and she whispers into his ear, _Don’t forget_ , without clarifying what it is exactly that she needs him to remember. With some effort, he can now recall the thick, lumpy texture of the green jumper she was wearing where it rubbed against his cheek, and the clumsy, clingy way in which she had embraced him. He can’t be entirely sure that he remembers her face exactly as it was. This is an uneasy, melancholy thought, which bothers him a great deal, not for sentimental reasons, naturally, but merely because he is a man of details and he prides in his ability to recollect most of what he sees down to a T. A moment later he admits to himself that perhaps the former is also true. Either way, his mother is gone, remaining only in his recollection, however faulty it may be.

 In the memory, May Holmes has him put his gift away and sit beside her at the piano, and she plays him clunky, humble renditions of Chopin’s Nocturnes. _The worlds move in your honor, my loveliest, in your honor!_ she declaims dramatically as she goes, to make him laugh, and he does.   

 He falls asleep to the memory of his mother’s voice.

 

    

——— 

 

Only Sherlock could come up with the notion of going up to Quebec in the dead of winter to spy on his father’s late girlfriend’s daughter. (Then again, Joan reminds herself, she could have stayed home. Something in her yearns for these crazy adventures, for the oddity of Sherlock’s company even in less-than-ideal circumstances. Maybe she’s coming closer to accepting that this is an essential part of her, one that she can’t seem to run away from.)

 Joan is, therefore, on an undercover mission of sorts. It’s all very glamorous except for the fact that her two most pressing thoughts have to do with a) how ridiculous she feels and most importantly b) how insanely cold it is. Beautiful, golden-haired, trusting Soleil makes her a cup of tea and entertains her with polite conversation while they wait for Joan’s —fictional— friend to pick her up. When Joan hears the gentle creaking of the hardwood floor in the foyer, she pretends to be very frightened by _Creature of the Black Lagoon_ and distracts Soleil from noticing Sherlock slip into the house. It takes him only about half an hour to get what he needs and leave quietly through the back door, but it feels longer for Joan, her body taut as a bowstring throughout, as the minutes stretch and the snow keeps falling. Finally, they hear a car horn outside —Sherlock’s signal—, and Joan says goodbye to Soleil and walks back to the car as the cold bites at her face furiously. If she gets sick over this little trip, she decides, she is going to make Sherlock her personal valet for the duration of her convalescence.

 When she gets in the car, Sherlock reports on his findings and then eyes her suspiciously. “So, _Nicolette,_ ” he starts, “I was not aware that you spoke faultless French.”

 She resists the urge to roll her eyes. Of course he had heard her talking from the other end of the house. “I wouldn’t call it faultless.” She had switched to French to talk to Soleil, hoping it might put the girl at ease in addition to lending her cover some more credence. “What?” She checks the rear-view mirror, then starts the engine and backs into the road. “You can speak other languages but I can’t?”

 “You never mentioned it.”

 “It never came up.” She shivers, turning up the heating and driving away from the house. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him frowning in the general direction of her face, awaiting an explanation. “I took French at school and I was good at it so my parents encouraged me to keep on learning and I just ran with it,” she recounts. “I haven’t taken any lessons in years, though, so I’m rusty.”

 He hums a pensive little sound as he absorbs that information. “Why French?”

 She sighs, eyes focused on the road ahead, and demurs. “I had a little obsession with the French Revolution when I was a kid,” she confides after a moment, vaguely embarrassed.

 Sherlock nearly does a double take. “The French Revolution,” he repeats, impassive. “Was this concurrent to your mafia fetish?”

 “It’s not a fetish,” she corrects him, almost reflexively. “No. The mobsters and the stickers came later.”

 Now her partner is outright gaping at her. “Which part?”

 “Which part of what?”

 “Which part of the French Revolution were you obsessed with?”

 “Um, all of it?” Joan considers it for a moment. “I guess especially the gory parts, you know, the storming of the Bastille, the beheadings… Also Napoleon.”

 “Napoleon,” he echoes, tonelessly, as if he had some sort of difficulty processing this information. They get to an intersection and as Joan slows to a stop and waits for the light to turn green, she casts a sidelong glance at Sherlock: there’s a soft, wondering look on his face she hasn’t seen in a while. “I cannot imagine what Mary Watson had to say about this,” he remarks affably as he looks up to meet her gaze.

 “Yeah, it was, um… Hard to explain to other moms, I guess.”.She allows herself a tiny little grin. “The advantage was that a few years later when I started reading all the comic books she and Dad bought for Oren, she was so relieved I was over the creepy stuff that she didn’t even complain much.” 

 “Fascinating.”

 Sherlock keeps watching her in silent admiration, waiting for more. It’s a little disquieting, to be honest, but it’s better than being subjected to the ninety-minute lecture on the native Quebecois flora and fauna he had attempted on the way over from New York.  

 “This is yet another example of your penchant for the bizarre, dating back to your childhood,” he points out, a moment later.

 She shrugs. “I guess.”

 Now he is half frowning, half smiling at her. “What other secret skills might you be harboring, Watson?”

 Joan raises her eyebrows innocently and says, “You’re gonna have to wait and see.”

 By the time they reach the airport in Montreal, about an hour later, Joan no longer feels like a walking icicle, but she’s glad she doesn’t have to drive anymore because she’s getting sleepy enough that it would be a safety hazard. Their plane is slightly delayed by heavy snowfall and Joan jokes that if they can’t get on it, they’ll have to hitchhike, _It Happened One Night_ -style. Sherlock, of course, doesn’t get the reference, and Joan just laughs, too tired to explain.  

 

———

 

Watson has made clear her plans to take a quick nap during the flight home, and Sherlock intends to use the time to review the files pertaining to the Sabine Raoult case and the papers they’d taken from Soleil’s house, but soon after take-off he gets distracted when he sees Watson pull out a book from her bag and try to read, though her tiredness is apparent and her eyelids droop. She probably only intends to read herself to sleep, but his interest is piqued nonetheless. He raises an inquisitive eyebrow at her.

 Watson shrugs. “This trip reminded me that I wanted to re-read this one and I was just checking it out,” she explains, holding up the slim book for him to see.

 “Does it happen to be about the French Revolution?” he asks, noticing the cover, which features an androgynous figure dressed in a Napoleonic uniform.

 “Hmm, only a little bit, I think.” She scrunches up her nose, doubtful. “It’s more about love. And having weird adventures and putting yourself in danger for the people you believe in.”

 “Ah, so it pertains to some of your areas of expertise, one might say.”

 Watson smiles drowsily, too drained to laugh. He shoves the case files into the seat pocket and takes the book from her lax hands. “Allow me,” he says, opening up the book on the first page. “ _It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock,_ ” he reads out. He pauses and frowns, and Watson grins.

 “Yeah, I figured you would make that face. Go on. It gets better.”

 So he resumes. By the time he gets to the end of the second paragraph ( _He liked no one except Joséphine, and he liked her the way he liked chicken_ ), Watson has fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder, which should probably bother him —or would have if he still were the man he was before they met— but doesn’t.  So he falls silent and for an instant contemplates his sleeping partner, the sound of her breathing even and soothing over the background noise of the plane’s engine.  

 Then he remembers the book in his lap, picks it up and examines it for a moment. It’s as good a distraction as any, he supposes, from the anxiety and the tedium of flying, and in all honesty he is too tired to expect his analytical skills to yield any insight related to Sabine’s case at the moment. Besides, it’s an opportunity to find out if Watson’s literary tastes are as questionable as her preference in movies. So he re-opens the book and reads on, gradually becoming more engrossed until he finishes it. After that, he falls asleep as well, half turned towards Watson with his head resting against hers. The novel’s interwoven, intricate narrative of star-crossed almost-lovers —meeting and re-meeting through war and famine and madness— is more familiar than he’d care to admit, and it stays with him in hazy, confusing dreams that drag on endlessly.

 When the plane lands and he jolts awake, the first thing he sees is Watson’s face up close, barely outlined by the dim lights above: the high curve of her cheekbone, sprinkled with freckles, and the delicate arch of her mouth. Before he can warn himself that it would be improper, perhaps even disloyal, to keep looking at her while she’s unaware, he is distracted by the flash of lightning he glimpses through the window, and right after that he hears the muffled sound of rain pelting down on the fuselage. Then he becomes aware of Watson stirring beside him.

 Frowning slightly —perhaps at the injustice of being awake already— she looks him over once and smiles a faint, approving, still-drowsy smile in the general direction of the book still in his lap —with his finger marking a page near the end—, probably having deduced that he read it. She doesn’t move away, but she does roll her head to the other side, maybe intending to give him some measure of personal space. “I didn’t drool on you, did I?” she slurs, squinting at his shoulder with some concern. He shakes his head and she nods and yawns at once and then turns to the window. “We home already?”

 He doesn’t think before he speaks. He’s too busy looking at her. “Almost,” he says.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1.Title from: "You Were a Kindness" by The National  
> 2\. TW/Warnings: mentions of physical assault, psychological abuse, suicide and drug use (in connection with the s3 finale and the Oscar Rankin storyline.)  
> 3\. This started out as a single chapter, but I divided it into two parts so it wouldn’t be so long. WTF. I used to write nothing but ficlets. What is this.  
> 4\. About Sherlock's birthday: there seems to be a general consensus that Sherlock's birthday is on January 6th (only one day before my own, which I don't know whether to be happy or worried about, lmao), although it is my understanding that this is a matter of some dispute. I’ve accepted this date into my personal canon even if it’s ~disputable~ because a) I like winter birthdays and b) being a Capricorn would fit right in w/ Sherlock’s characterization if my own Capricorn-ness is any indication.  
> 5\. Relatedly, the following timeline geekery: my timeline for this collection more or less follows the period in which season 4 aired, because I find that easier than trying to piece together some sort of coherent chronology from the dates we’re given within the show (and smart people like @hophophop are much better at it than I am, anyway.) However, early January 2016, the period within which the little birthday section is framed in this particular timeline, happens to be the time when CBS aired episode 4.07 (“Miss Taken”, a.k.a. “The One Where Joan’s Stepdad Is a Gross, Inappropriate Racist.”) Because I’m addressing my feelings about that episode in later fic, I’ve decided to leave all that aside and merely borrow this episode’s placement in time. In other words, you can read this section as happening days before the events of “Miss Taken,” and though I’m not discussing them in any other section of this chapter, I certainly plan to do so at a later stage.  
> 6\. Also relatedly, the timeline for this chapter is supposed to cover what I intended to address from episodes 4.04-4.11.  
> 7\. Kitty’s “proper fun Tshirt tradition” is an idea I’m introducing for the first time as such here, but the seeds for it are in Ch. 1 of this same fic, where I have her send him a tee soon after his relapse.  
> 8\. I’ll stop using so many dream sequences at some point, hopefully.  
> 9\. The novel Joan is reading near the end of this chapter is Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, which, as my beta @joke_pike_junior pointed out, totally sounds like an awful bodice-ripper type, but is actually awesome. Check it out.  
> 10\. The lines of poetry quoted by May Holmes, are, of course, from e.e.cummings’s “except in your honor.”  
> 11\. The “funny poem” referenced by Joan is Mallory Ortberg’s hilarious and excellent “Male Novelist Jokes.”  
> 12\. About the fight with Cortes (from 4.04): I describe Joan as “[coming] back that night with an incipient black eye, a split lip, and torn knuckles.” It’s a bit more than what we actually see in the episode, but I kept thinking she had to have been a little bit more roughed up than what they showed us if she “allowed Cortes to land far too many punches,” as Sherlock says.  
> 13\. As usual, the opinions expressed in the chapter may or may not be super healthy; I have striven to make them true to character.  
> 14\. About the section featuring the outing with the nephews: as I always say, my memory is terrible so I don’t actually recall if Oren Watson canonically has children or not. (I think all we know for sure is that he’s married to Gabrielle, right?) However, I have made up two sons for Oren and Gabrielle Watson, OCs Lee and Jordan Watson, whom I introduced in my standalone fic “ten years.” Also, I have no idea whether you can get any stuffed animals (especially like the one I described) in Coney Island, so I apologize if that sounds outlandish.  
> 15\. This chapter wouldn’t be what it is without all the wonderful meta regularly provided by fandom legends @hophophop and @beanarie, as well as invaluable and comprehensive proofreading by @joe_pike_junior.  
> 16\. For those of you just joining us, friendly reminder that the three-weeks’ suspension didn’t happen in canon, it was my idea and it was referenced throughout ch 1-2.  
> 17\. Though I’m pretty sure show!Joan is a fairly good cook, this Joan is actually a pretty bad one, because I just have lot of fun with that trope. Just clarifying in case anyone’s confused.  
> 18\. I also made up that “big federal manhunt case” that distracts Sherlock from calling Kitty on his birthday. Also, I actually did not research the tiny Shakespeare reference in that same section so I apologize if it’s nonsensical.

**Author's Note:**

> Work Notes:  
> 1\. Apologies for any mistakes or inaccuracies –factual, grammatical or otherwise– this fanfiction may contain. English is not my native language. I proofread my stuff but I am very lazy and both the Internet and my memory have their limitations.  
> 2\. The brownstone, for instance, makes no fucking sense. I have looked at fan-made maps and production floor plans but there’s so much we just don’t know. The place is literally a batcave, so I’ll generally just stick to the way I imagine it.  
> 3\. The timeline for each chapter will be indicated in its chapter notes. I will also clarify any changes to canon events that I think might generate confusion.  
> 4\. Some chapters are platonic, some are more “romantic” (I hate that term for them but I don’t really know how else to signal the difference), hopefully they will all be in character and somewhat endurable.  
> 5\. The guiding philosophy to this whole endeavor: “Just let Sherlock and Joan unpack this for forty minutes. Literally no one is here for the cases.”


End file.
